“Racism is evil,” declared Donald Trump on Monday, “and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

OK, “declared” may be too strong a word for what we heard from the president. “Stated” is perhaps a better descriptor. “Read out” might be the most accurate of all. Trump made these “additional remarks” with great reluctance and only after two days of intense criticism from both the media and senior Republicans over his original remarks blaming “many sides” for the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The words were not his own: they were scripted by aides and delivered with the assistance of a teleprompter. The president reserved his personal, off-the-cuff ire on Monday for the black CEO of Merck, not for the white fascists of Virginia.

Much of the frenzied media coverage of what CNN dubbed “48 hours of turmoil for the Trump White House” has overlooked one rather crucial point: Trump doesn’t like being forced to denounce racism for the very simple reason that he himself is, and always has been, a racist.

Consider the first time the president’s name appeared on the front page of the New York Times, more than 40 years ago. “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City,” read the headline of the A1 piece on Oct. 16, 1973, which pointed out how Richard Nixon’s Department of Justice had sued the Trump family’s real estate company in federal court over alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act.

“The government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color,’” the Times revealed. “It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.” (Trump later settled with the government without accepting responsibility.)

Oh and remember: we knew all of this before he was elected president of the United States of America. He was elected in spite of all this (yet another reminder that “not all Trump supporters are racist, but all of them decided that racism isn’t a deal-breaker”).

A supporter wears a shirt with a confederate flag as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the Richmond Coliseum in Richmond, Va., June 10, 2016.

Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Some had hoped that Trump would be moderated by office; there was much talk of a presidential pivot. It was all utter nonsense and wishful thinking from lazy commentators who have found it difficult to cover, and call out, a president who regularly traffics in racially charged rhetoric while surrounding himself with an array of race-baiting advisers. Since entering the Oval Office, Trump has appointed Steve Bannon — former executive chairman of Breitbart News, which has stories tagged ‘Black Crime’ — as his White House chief strategist, and Jeff Sessions — who was once accused of calling a black official in Alabama a “nigger” — as his attorney general; he has claimed, without a shred of evidence, that millions of immigrants “voted illegally” for Hillary Clinton; and, perhaps most shocking of all, he has publicly and repeatedly belittled Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has claimed Native American heritage, as “Pocahontas.”

This is Racism 101 from a sitting U.S. president. And it is the stark and undeniable truth, and key context, that is missing from much of the coverage of the political fallout from Charlottesville. Journalists, opinion formers, members of Congress, and members of the public continue to treat Trump as they would any previous president — they expect their head of government to come out and condemn racism with passion, vigor, speed, and sincerity. But what do you do if the president is himself a long-standing purveyor of racism and xenophobia? What then? Do you still demand he condemn and castigate what is essentially his base? Do you continue to feign shock and outrage over his lack of shock and outrage?

Yes, the U.S. has had plenty of presidents in recent decades who have dog-whistled to racists and bigots, and even incited hate against minorities — think Nixon’s Southern Strategy, Reagan and his “welfare queens,” George H.W. Bush and the Willie Horton ad, and the Clintons and their “super-predators” — but there has never been a modern president so personally steeped in racist prejudices, so unashamed to make bigoted remarks in public and with such a long and well-documented record of racial discrimination.

So can we stop playing this game where journalists demand Trump condemns people he agrees with and Trump then pretends to condemn them in the mildest of terms? I hate to say this, but it is worth paying attention to the leader of the Virginia KKK, who told a reporter in August 2016: “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in.”

So can we stop pretending that Trump isn’t Trump? That the presidency has changed him, or will change him? It hasn’t and it won’t. There will be no reset; no reboot; no pivot. This president may now be going through the motions of (belatedly) denouncing racism, with his scripted statements and vacuous tweets. But here’s the thing: why would you expect a lifelong racist to want to condemn or crack down on other racists? Why assume a person whose entire life and career has been defined by racially motivated prejudice and racial discrimination, by hostility toward immigrants, foreigners, and minorities, would suddenly be concerned by the rise of prejudice and discrimination on his watch? It is pure fantasy for politicians and pundits to suppose that Trump will ever think or behave as anything other than the bigot he has always been — and, in more recent years, as an apologist for other bigots, too.

We would do well to heed the words of those who have spent decades studying this bizarre president. “Donald is a 70-year-old man,” Trump biographer David Cay Johnston reminded me in the run-up to his inauguration in January. “I’m 67. I’m not going to change and neither is Donald.”

Top photo: White nationalist demonstrators walk into the entrance of Lee Park surrounded by counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 12, 2017.

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Except that’s not at all what he did or said and you KNOW it….he said SOME of them are rapists…which is the truth. Or aren’t over 80 percent of the cowardly women coming over the border raped by the men coming over with them ?

Russiagate didn’t work, now we are back to racism, political correctness and identity politics, the failed democratic strategy that put Trump in the White House. The Deep State is happy, corporate media keeping everyone distracted from the obscene economic inequalities, the endless wars, and the global US takover. Who are you working for, anyway?

After reading some of the comments, I think that it’s sometimes difficult for those who have never suffered racism to know what racism is –in all it’s subtle tones as well as overt actions–not to mention institutionalized racism!

I am so sick and tired of seeing people like you CONSTANTLY bashing our President. I COULDN’T STAND Obama and actually got sick to my stomach when he was re-elected but I never disrespected the office of the Presidency while he was in office. He is the one that should be trash talked. He was a smooth talker and wanted to take America 3rd world status. He claimed he was for the working class, but the truth is he was for HIMSELF. Everything he did hurt the American people. He kissed the ass of all our enemies…even tolerated our sailors being humiliated! Disgusting. He did NOTHING to help his own race. He sickens me.
At least TRUMP is REAL. What you see is what you get. The fact that he is a billionaire and could live the rest of his life on a beach enjoying his family but instead CHOSE to run for office and HELP those of us who have been shit on the most…..it’s US..the working class. WE have stepped aside and given all the minorities plenty of room to free load off of us and it still isn’t enough.
Liberals and leftist is just another word for ASSHOLES in my book. Quit your frickin fault finding and whining and start supporting our President and this country and if you don’t like it VOTE next time to change it…but quit this BULLSHIT. Shut the hell up, get a job, quit throwing fits and temper tantrums….you’re a bunch of thumbsuckers that don’t know how to take on responsibility..you don’t want to WORK for anything. You just want to bloodsuck of the people who DO work.

ASSALAM! I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with PAIN. Good and FINE people don’t walk with KKK, WHITE SUPREMACIST, NAZIS, or ALT RIGHT. WOULD YOU?

I have read a document about an Australian Casino Complex in Sydney Harbor , Bidding process. Trump , in partnership with another company made a Bid. About six bids were received. The New South Wales Police Board vetted all bids. Trump`s bid was rejected because of ” his Mafia Connections”. At the time Aussie Police were battling to stop the American Mafias from getting established as Drug Suppliers in Sydney, Melbourne , the Gold Coast etc.

Charlottesville was a stunt, Winchester Bridge, Manchester, Orlando, Dallas, Paris, Times Sq., Fort Lauderdale. All these events were scripted stunts and the media – The Intercept – is a part of selling the stunt. Get off your keyboard and go out and talk with some American people. These stunts have become obvious. Journalists in America seem to have become their own audience.

“The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Quran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.”

I second you, and absolutely agree with you, Mehdi Hasan. I am actually making a prediction as a Political-Economist that Trump has already ushered ‘the process of disintegration’ of the “Evil Deep State of USA” and we would soon see the “The bully-in-Chief” , as well as “The Destroyer-in-Chief”, “The United States of America” disintegrate, almost the same way, as did USSR which would be a great Omen for the World, in general, and for the “Americans” in particular! Keep up the great work!

The truth is that: I am not surprised by his actions and what comes out of his mouth…and neither should anyone else. He hasn’t changed a bit all this years and he won’t. He is just an illiterate ignorant that thought like always that he could do a better job than anyone bebause he is an”fixer and a builder” when he hasn’t fixed nothing let alone build. The ones that build are the one that use their hands to do so…and he doesn’t. Whoever who voted for him and believed him…well those deserve what they have. He is a pathetic clown that JUST NOW realized that been a president is not as easy as he thought and that he is in the eye of the storm for everything that he says and do…and he will continue to be until he lives the position that he wanted. He leads the office and everything as a reality show and that’s what he will continue to do. I guess is from all the wining…I bet Putin is laughing so hard and saying: Keep trying punk, MAYBE just MAYBE one day you will be like me! Ha

I’m sorry, this isn’t journalism. This is trash gossip. I expect better of the Intercept than to engage in this kind of slapdash personal vilification, scraping the bottom of the barrel… This is the kind of thing one writes when he or she knows in advance the conclusion, that the president is a racist, and then goes about finding any scrap you can bring up to justify that conclusion. If the author bothered go on YouTube he can find compilations of Donald Trump condemning the Ku Klux Klan, condemning racism, condemning neo nazis, going back a couple of decades. If you don’t include that in the story, then you’re not doing journalism, you’re just venting your hatred for the guy. And that’s despicable and disgusting.

Just wondering what exactly could Trump do to convince you that he is a racist? His top advisors are white supremacists or Nazi sympathizers. He just excused admitted Nazi’s for being “upset about the removal of a statue”. The author listed over twenty ways Trump has told you he is a racist yet you scribble down a comment whining that there is no evidence. If it walks like a duck….

I’m sorry, if you really don’t understand why working class and lower middle class people would vote for President Trump, then you’re either not thinking or you’re not paying attention, or you’re blinded by the kind of vicious campaigns of personal vilification which the media, including the Intercept, are obsessed with. To begin with, your characterization of President Trump as a “capitalist” only concerned with making money…is almost economically illiterate. If you don’t understand that there are different KINDS of businessmen, then you cannot comment intelligently about them. The nature of President Trumps’ business background has a lot to do with the kind of economic policies he champions, policies which are solid reasons why working class and lower middle class voters would have been fools to vote for Hilary Clinton last year instead. Look, the core of Trump’s business activities has never been financial. He is not a guy like Mitt Romney, who spent his whole life making money off of money, and off of buying up American industrial companies and selling off their assets and operations to offshore locations. Trump has always been essentially a BUILDER—of hotels, of resorts, of business developments. And Trump’s economic policies, both during the campaign and once in office, reflect that. Not only that, but his principle policies closely parallel Bernie Sanders’ policies! The two many economic policies they agree on are this. First, both men vowed to reverse the tremendous damage which the “free trade treaty” regime has visited on the American working class, resulting in the closing of over 60 000 factories which provided high paying wages in the past twenty years. From the time they were first proposed in the 1990s, by Bush Sr. and then the Clintons, the UNIONS opposed these treaties because they allow manufacturers to ship their plants abroad, where they could pay foreign workers next to nothing to do the same work Americans had been well paid for before, and then re-import their products into the U.S. without having to pay any tariffs or duties on them. Before the free trade treaties, they couldn’t do this as easily because if they outsourced the jobs abroad, they would still have to pay duties if they re imported their products to the U.S, and that would cancel out some of the benefits of cheap labor abroad. So both Sanders and Trump promised to get the U.S. out of these free trade treaties, and to lobby American business to stop outsourcing good paying jobs and start repatriating some of these jobs. And as soon as he was elected Trump went to work on keeping this promise. Haven’t you been paying attention to this at all? Or are you, like the media, obsessed instead with bullshit about the Russians telling you how to vote or with whether or not the president phrased his explicit condemnation of racists the way the media says he should have, and other such bullshit which does NOTHING for working people. The second main issue on which Trump and Sanders agreed is that the U.S. needs a massive infrastructure building campaign. Sanders talked about a trillion dollar program, and that is what Trump is trying to get done. I heard one of these vicious reporters sneering at Trump in his press conference the other day, asking the president “Do you really think you’ll be able to get an infrastructure bill through Congress? I mean, you lost on health care.” It was obvious this journalist was HAPPY about the idea of defeating the infrastructure bill. But you know what, that infrastructure bill will also means tens of thousands of high paying jobs of all kinds. Why in the hell do you not understand that it is clearly in the interest of working class people to support a president who wants to bring back higher paying manufacturing jobs and create new high paying jobs in a massive infrastructure building program???? I mean, seriously, in the face of programs like this that obviously benefit workers by promoting higher paying jobs, how in the hell can you so blithely say, oh he’s just a money making capitalist and there’s no reason for working class people to vote for him. Are you not thinking AT ALL? Are you just regurgitating prejudice against business people?

who pays you Paval? Talk about propaganda. I must say that the Trump team tries to cover its ass with propaganda from all of its various news sources but to pay someone to enter a site like INTERCEPT to do battle in such a slick way is very intriguing to say the least. Are you a poor graduate student who needs to pays student loans? Or are you simply a Goldman Sachs employee? Ah….you work for Bannon at his radio station.

“But you know what, that infrastructure bill will also means tens of thousands of high paying jobs of all kinds.” As someone that works in that field, no, it will not. It’s going to result in a private money grab by large companies and there will not be thousands of high paying jobs.

I still don’t buy that Trump is a racist. Some of the attitudes are generational like my grandparents who were not racists. In order to add credibility to your arguments you should have presented counter arguments like the openness of his country clubs to all races and religions or the fact that he has very diverse workforce in leadership positions in the Trump organization. . Many of the early discrimination lawsuits were from his father. Sorry but your arguments do not hold up. I expect more balanced reporting from the Intercept.

You are the person the author speaks of. What exactly does a racist have to do to convince you? The Nazi’s at Charlottesville caries flags and screamed Heil Trump and yet you still give them and Trump the “benefit of the doubt”?

Superb survey of Trump being Trump! However, you end it with a gratuitous and unfortunate ageist argument–that he won’t change because he is the age he is. What does that have to do with anything? I notice that the most progressive, brilliant, incisive commentators/writers like yourself make this very mistake. Your parting, throw-away contention (prejudice) undermines the incredible power and credibility of the well-supported arguments you express before it. Please, in the future, check yourself–ageism is a form of bigotry, too. And remember you will be 70 one day, too. If others treat you as “other” then, there will be nothing you can do about it.

Nothing ageist about that comment, it was restating what Trumps biographer said. Besides, I also am 60 and I also know that my hatred of racists will not change, a lifetime strong belief like that does not change. Nothing ageist about it, just a statement of fact.

But, but, but… Donald Trump said during the campaign that no one respects black people more than he did. He also said to them – “What have you got to lose?” if they voted for him. Oh, wait, Donald Trump is a shameless, loathsome liar who will say anything to achieve his objectives because he hasn’t the slightest amount of honor or integrity. In answer to his pandering question of above I think the correct answer is “Just about everything.” One black person who lost right away was the woman who worked as the Chief Usher at the White House and had for many years. Trump got rid of her for no good reason except that she was black and perhaps reminded this racist pig of Obama.
Trump disgraces this country every time he opens his pie hole. This last week has just been particularly dreadful.

So it seems that you prefer the soft fascism of meaningless and empty virtue signaling of a bunch of anonymous brownshirts to the hard fascism of self declared neo-nazis. Good for you. But don’t kid yourself, you just endorsed fascism. Be careful what you wish for.

Corporate media refusing to call Trump a racist to his face is enabling his sick behavior. And they don’t care because? Racism is fucking great for business. All that matters is manipulation for ratings. Don Lemon holds up a sign on camera that says NIGGERS. He then says, does this offend anyone?

Is he actually trying to do some good with this? No. It was purely a pr stunt that CNN head Jeff Zucker just LOVES.

wait a second. I’m indian and removing public memorials of men who owned slaves is okay?
will they burn down the declaration of independence? since many of the signatories were slave owners. did anyone actually ask what is going on? will they change the name “Washington DC”?or erase history forever(ISIS style)? history is important even it’s good or bad. the KKK is dying, David Duke is now a zombie they will extinct soon. but these violent groups are justified in the media and used by politicians.
if the law doesn’t apply to them then in future it may become an anarchic movement.

These are monuments of people that fought against this country, so it’s not just the slavery thing, they are also traitors. And no one is erasing history, you can still read about them in books and museums. I doubt you’re Indian.

General Robert E. Lee was a great American general and patriot. He, too, was caught up in the War of Northern Aggression and took the side he took, to defend his people in Northern Virginia. Later, he agreed to command all the confederate forces. He remains a bright beacon through all time as a defender of the people over the forces of tyranny. He was never a traitor and was never considered one in his time by anybody. Only now in 2017 do the actual traitors of AntiAm call this great man a traitor and call for his statues and memory to be abolished. We, who know history, know who you are.

Fine. I’m offend by people like Margaret Sanger, a eugenics promoter, President Roosevelt who put US citizens of Japanese heritage in prison camps during WW II, President Wilson who re segregated the White House. Let’s tear down their statues and rename any streets or parks named after these horrible people-you can just read about their awful behavior and ideas in books.

Are you certain that books and museums will not be also cleared of anything that would suggest parts of American history? What worries me is that in a way, such actions are also burying American racism so that nobody can prove it was ever there. This is a very complex issue and not all motives are clearly in view.

“I’m indian and removing public memorials of men who owned slaves is okay?” Congratulations! You win the award for Most Irrelevant Right-Wing Co-opting of Identity Politics! Additionally, your botched and yet uncolloquial use of English (“they will extinct soon”) suggests you’re not Native-American. Perhaps you’re not even a human being formulating sentences and were scripted by the hirelings of Mercer, Putin or someone else.

rohan karmakar sounds more like Indian than Native American.. Why isn’t it a valid point to leave up statues to remember history. Gen Robert E Lee was gracious in defeat, and led reconstruction efforts. Maybe they should all be torn down – I don’t know I care. Racism isn’t about an old statue.

Over here in Europe Indian means from India….
All those commenters who thought of native Americans are the real Racists.
When a country starts removing historical statues revolution is coming.
Over here in Europe we can destroy all the statues of historical figures as what they did wasn’t exactly human rights correct behaviour.

Over there and anywhere where intelligent people live Indians are those born in India…but keep in mind that this is United States of America which means that…most are completely ignorant and that is a fact.

Author and journalist, Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, echoed the same thoughts in Democracy Now! about Donald Trump (Drumpt) as Hasan. Trump has always been and will remain a racist, violent, misogynist, and corrupt person. The so-called mainstream media is decrying Trump’s remarks. HYPOCRITES. The media benefited financially from Trump’s violence. Now, these same journalists and stupid liberals are crying foul. They laughed at Trump’s lies and they built his image. As Prof. Mark Bray from Dartmouth stated in Democracy Now! fascism must be stopped early before it becomes what Hitler did in Germany.

You’re so full of $hit! Trump has been racist all his life? You’re such a dooshbag! You had no clue who Trump was until he started running for office in 2015! Morons like you like to throw the racism card out, because you have no argument to your own hypocrisy and double standard! Did losers leftists like you condemn Black LIES Matter and George Soros paid protesters, when they were destroying properties and attacked conservatives and non-RINO Repubs? Of course not! Because you’re a skummy hypocrite! What Trump said was exactly right! Both sides are to blame for the violence. But, you leftists want him to take your side. Look in the mirror, dooshbag! Stop calling yourself a journalist! Because real journalists report a story from “both” sides!

Sorry how about every NYC’er that has lived with him for 40 years, we are full of shit? We just formed an opinion now? How long have you known him is the better question. What are you basing your opinion on? And no real journalists, report the story, what it is, sometimes it both sides that case something and sometimes it’s one side. Sorry truth and facts exists. They are not malleable to fit a point of view. Obviously you don’t understand that for we can see where all your information comes from based on the regurgitation of talking points. You imply you think for yourself and yet it’s apparent you are just a puppet who has been sold fake news…for example do a little research all those cheering supporters at Trumps escalator arrival, all paid actors…well actors for he is not a Lannister and never pays his debts (All NYC’ers know that, I almost worked for him, but was told by a NYS Senator not to for he never pays his bills, and that is a fact)

Excellent article. Despite the Russian bots making excuses and acting blind. You can judge a man by the company he keeps and Trump’s corner is full of christofascists, rabid Orthodox Jews, Hindutva fascists, white supremacists, Islamaphobes, the KKK….
Trump isn’t just going after all these people because he wants their votes but as this great article shows Trump is a fascist himself. He has been since his grandfather ran a whorehouse and his father got arrested at a KKK rally.
While other societies are becoming more tolerant, much of the white conservative world is going backward into intolerance with the likes of Wilders, Le Pen, UKIP, Pegida, Putin….Trump is just the American version of that same white reactionary fascism.
Again great article. Trump is too old and ignorant to change, just like his stupid white trash base.

Nete Peedham: Interesting that you speak in coded alt-right even as you descry the likelihood that The Intercept is overrun with bots. Your generalized inference-laden language is the surest sign that (1) you have no real argument and (2) you’re a bot speaking the modern equivalent of a Perl script. “Limousine liberals”? “book on how to lose an election *in* Ted Kennedy’s seat”? These formulations are barely in non-bot English. Rather, they’re in botlish.

Hrmm, this is getting interesting from theintercept perspective. First pro Trump to the extreme, now anti Trump to the extreme. Eager now to please? Bipolar(s) demand a presence – however at the expense of those around them.

This was part of the plan for Trump, why didn’t you see it coming? All is fair, especially for fools as is with war. Trump is Bush Jr 2.0. No excuses for Hillary as she is twisted, but the lesser of two evils such as Trump is still an evil. Dig into Bannon, he is pulling the strings obviously, funny that, his whole career he always showed up out of the blue no? To befriend and then later to shape. Trump wasnt the first, but a fool none the less for taking the bait. Bannon is no lone ranger, too calculated for that. Find his group.

The entire premise for your comment is incorrect. The Intercept was virulently hostile to Trump before the election and remains hostile afterward. The anti-Trump bias of the Intercept mirrors that of CNN, except a few exceptions.

TI is not any sort of leaning consistent unified agenda pushing propaganda rag like wallstreet media is, just exposure of events and what may lie behind them. And you are free to comment and push your own agenda.

ps – President Trump is nothing like that idiot bush and his criminal sidekick.

“You are not going to support me even though you know I am the best thing that could happen for Israel. I know why you are not going to support me. You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money,” Trump told a full auditorium of Jewish donors and Republican Jewish supporters. “You want to control your own politicians.”

But, in the same breath, the Republican presidential hopeful said, “I would love your support.”

“I am going to win,” he went on to tease the crowd, who in return burst out in laughter. “Unless something happens — I cross the street, and the wrong thing happens… I believe I am going to win.”

Earlier in his speech, Trump poked the crowd by saying, “Stupidly, you want to give money. Adding, “You just like me because my daughter (Ivanka) happens to be Jewish.”

“The reason Trump will not get the support of Jewish donors is because he’s not serious enough on policy,” Fleischer told Jewish Insider. “To suggest that donors want to control their politicians is offensive.”

Trump also missed an opportunity to clarify his comments to The Associated Press, in which he questioned Israel’s commitment to peace. “I don’t know that Israel has the commitment to make it. I don’t know that the other side has the commitment to make it. With that being said, I have a good chance,” he repeated. “If you’re going to make a deal – and you can make a great deal – you can’t go in with the attitude that you’re going to shut it down. You’ve got to go in and do it nicely so everyone’s happy.”

He did, however, state that Israel is not being given enough credit for the concessions they’ve already made.

Trump drew loud boos from the audience as he refused to declare Israel was the undivided capital of Israel. “Can I at least pin you down on Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel? Is that a position you support?” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks asked.

“You know what I want to do? I want to wait until I meet with Bibi,” Trump replied. As he was loudly jeered by an audible member in the room, Trump turned to his left and asked, “Who’s the wise guy? Do me a favor, just relax. You’ll like me very much, believe me. Don’t worry about it.”

Trump also drew attention as he referred to the audience as “businesspeople” when he spoke about renegotiating the Iran nuclear deal. “I’m a negotiator like you folks, we’re negotiators,” Trump said. “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t negotiate deals? This room negotiates a lot. This room perhaps more than any room I’ve ever spoken to.” The crowd nodded their heads in dismay.”

Did Trump really intend to insult the room by calling them negotiators like himself? A room full of rich Jewish donors who probably do negotiate a lot in their business dealing?

I really don’t find this racist or insulting to Jewish people.

Trump’s daughter and grand-kids and trusted son in law are Jewish. So how can Trump be anti-semitic?

Your second link leads to this story, another report on the same event.
“Donald Trump on Thursday told a roomful of influential Jewish Republicans that he and they have a lot in common. “Look, I’m a negotiator like you folks,” the GOP front-runner said during his remarks to the Republican Jewish Coalition forum in Washington, D.C. “Look, we’re negotiators.”
Later, the Donald returned to his awkward Jews-are-shrewd-businesspeople leitmotif. “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t renegotiate deals?” he said. “Probably more than any room I’ve ever spoken in.”
During his rambling remarks, the real estate mogul also repeatedly conceded that he didn’t expect to win over the group. “I don’t want your money so therefore you’re probably not going to support me,” he told the room, adding: “You want to control your own politician.”

You say trump “accused an American born Hispanic of being a Mexican!” He is a Mexican! Hispanic is a term liberals use to artificially deny thousands of years of existence to a people who inhabitted this hemisphere long before the Spaniards (read Hispanics) stumbled into Mesoamerica and the Carribbean when they got lost on their way to India. To call someone a Mexican is not an accusation of anything, “mexican” is not the equivalent of the “N” word, except coming out of the mouths of bigots and you fell into that trap. It is a source of pride to trace ones origins to the original inhabitants of the hemisphere and not whitewash ones historical it by assuming the name of the genocidal colonialists.

A leftist’s working definition of “hate speech” or “racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic speech”: 1) When a Republican or anyone Right of center speaks; 2) When anyone with whom the leftist mob currently disagrees speaks; 3) When anyone whom the Leftist mob wishes to smear, slander, or discredit speaks; 4) When someone on the Right is making good points, and the Left realizes they must be silenced before the public begins to consider the point of view, the Left will use the convenient “hate speech” label to provoke revulsion and preclude consideration or discussion; 5) The “hate speech” label is very useful for justifying violent attacks on non-violent individuals with whom the Left disagrees; 6) Giving ideas a label of “Hate speech” immediately creates a useful victim class that the Left can then bilk for votes.

“he was accused of ordering “all the black [employees] off the floor” of his Atlantic City casinos during his visits;”

How did you fact-check this? Did you ask Donald Trump to clarify? Maybe it did not happen, maybe it was only the staff, maybe it was common in the 80s, maybe it was a false story only to delegitimize a presidential candidate in 2015.

Where an employee also gushes about Trump thus – “I very much enjoyed working for Donald Trump,” Inglin said. “When he was there, it was tip-top. You’d’ve thought he was the Messiah.”

The part you refer to is this –
“I met a bus driver named Kip Brown, who worked the Port Authority route, up and back each morning, for Academy Bus Lines. He had been at Academy for fifteen years and was No. 3 in seniority, out of seventy drivers in the region. As ridership has fallen, Academy has been cutting back on its schedule. The number of visitors arriving by bus is an eighth of what it was a quarter century ago. In the spring, Brown, just forty-seven, retired.
Now he was looking for work as a livery driver. Brown also used to work in the casinos, at the Showboat, bussing tables, and at Trump’s Castle, stripping and waxing floors. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” he said. “It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”

Have you looked for material to debunk this? Maybe spoken to black Trump employees who praise him.

In a way America is living what Russia lived through at the beginning of the 20th century, Germany and Italy lived through in the 30th and now it is America’s turn to show how exceptional they are. Russia went communist, Germany went Nazi , Italy went fascist and where is the USA headed ? One thing is sure …all of those blaming Trump for this situation are hypocrites. Previous decades of misguided policies are the real cause of such societal delusion.

It is scary to watch your politics from a distance and it is getting harder by the day to hope that this distance will not be reduced. I wonder why we´re sanctioning Russia. I had never thought N.Kleins book “No is not enough” is a bloody screenplay enacted live by this moron president of yours.

I believe you are overstating your case, Mr. Hasan, and therefore undermining your own credibility. (And, by extension, the credibility of The Intercept.)

When dealing with politicians, and especially when dealing with Trump, I think it is much wiser to judge them by their actions rather than by their words. But if we apply this rationale to your article, about 90% of it would have to be cut away, and your argument would look extremely weak. In your entire article, you give only one example of a concrete action which Trump took that may have been racially discriminatory, but the legal charges were made over 40 years ago, and Trump settled without admitting fault.

You also claim that Trump must be a racist because racists like him. By that logic, Barack Obama, who bombed seven countries during his presidency, was an anti-war president because anti-war voters liked him, and Hillary Clinton, who received $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman-Sachs, was an anti-Wall-Street candidate because members of the Occupy movement voted for her.

Finally, you describe Trump as “a person whose entire life and career has been defined by racially motivated prejudice and racial discrimination”. Such a claim may be true of someone like David Duke. Trump’s career, on the other hand, is better defined by the goal of acquiring wealth and power through shameless self-promotion. Even his birtherism nonsense was just more self-promotion. After Obama released his birth certificate, Trump said, “I am really honored and I am really proud, that I was able to do something that nobody else could do.”

You make such strong claims, but you back them up with such weak arguments. I’ve seen your other work, and I know you are capable of much better.

I believe you are overstating your case, Mr. Hasan, and therefore undermining your own credibility. (And, by extension, the credibility of The Intercept.)

Yes, we all know that Trump said some tasteless things regarding race. You give plenty of examples. Of course, quite a few of the examples you cite are unproven allegations or media hype. To be fair, let’s just assume that about half these criticisms are overblown, but that the other half are fully legitimate. I’ll admit that the list of racist things Trump has said is still pretty long, even if it is cut in half.

The next question is: what actions has Trump actually done which are racially discriminatory? You only give one example. One! And it is from 44 years ago! And Trump settled without admitting fault.

Yet you describe Trump as “a person whose entire life and career has been defined by racially motivated prejudice and racial discrimination”. Really? That defines his life and career? If his whole career were defined by the goal of racial discrimination, and he only took one discriminatory action in over 40 years, it looks like he’s done a pretty poor job of achieving that goal. On the other hand, if his career is defined by the goal of acquiring wealth and power through shameless self-promotion, it looks like he’s been pretty successful. Which goal do you think better defines his life and career?

And then you claim to give further evidence that Trump is a racist: namely the fact that racists like him. By that logic, Barack Obama, who bombed seven countries during his presidency, was an anti-war president because anti-war voters liked him, and Hillary Clinton, who received $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman-Sachs, was an anti-Wall-Street candidate because members of the Occupy movement voted for her.

At the end of the day, you can’t infer what Trump thinks from what he says, because whatever he has said, at some point he has also said the opposite. You can cherry pick quotes to prove any point you want. You seem to want to believe that this libertine Yankee is a bigoted Southern Klansman, and so that’s what you see. Meanwhile, Trump’s supporters cherry pick different quotes, and see a very different picture. Don’t you realize that you are both looking at the same Rorschach test?

When dealing with politicians, and especially when dealing with Trump, I think it is much wiser to judge them by their actions rather than by their words. But if we apply this rationale to your article, about 90% of it would have to be cut away, and your argument would look extremely weak.

I think it would be hard to write a better response to this article. But I have to admit, when the author lists out all of those things on the same page – most of them cited with links, the rorschach blot looks like a racist. I will also agree – racism isn’t this mans lifes work, but race certainly colors the mans policy and worldview (mulim bans and databases, ‘the wall’, mexican rapists).

Trump has always been a white supremacist dir-rtbag. No surprises there. He is not condemning the acts of the Nazis and Klan’s men there in Charlottesville because he is one of them. Because he really does endorse their vile, sinister stances.

Let’s also not forget that the Republican Party is doing nothing about the empowered white supremacy they’ve been cultivating for decades. The only thing they HAVE been doing is either pretend that they haven’t been exploiting white voters’ racial resentments to win elections for decades ( Mitch McConnell) or saying it’s time to put all of this white supremacy nonsense behind us and move onto important things (ex. Senator Ron Johnson).

Then there are the Bushes, two former Republican presidents, who will condemn white supremacy while not even mentioning Donald Trump by name. In fact, very few Republicans have actually directly called out Trump for his remarks. How brave.

A New York Times article read: “No word in the Trump lexicon is as tread-worn as ‘unprecedented.’ But members of the president’s staff, stunned and disheartened, said they never expected to hear such a voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private.”

Trump has long expressed white supremacist opinions in private, and yet these people are still working for him. Ans now they’re “stunned and disheartened” not because he holds such views, period, but that he expressed naked white supremacy out loud in public. Wow.

At the White House, a memo was issued urging Republican members of Congress “to echo the president’s line, contending that ‘both sides…acted inappropriately, and bear some responsibility.'”

And at the RNC, Chairwoman McDaniel tweeted at white supremacists, saying she didnt want their vote. Hahahaaha…sure. since when?

It is the height of temerity for the RNC to claim that they don’t want the votes of white supremacists. If they didn’t have the votes of white supremacists, there wouldn’t be a Republican officeholder in the entire goddamned country.

Shame on every single person working for this despicable man. Shame on each of them for working to advance his sickening agenda. Shame on all of them for tolerating his divisive, damaging, dangerous bigotries (and likely sharing them), but squirming about his making them public, because it makes their extremely privileged lives awkward.

You know who needs to be deported out of the country? Nazis like you. Seriously. You, least of all, deserve to live here because you do not even want the freedoms and democracy or even appreciate them. You really dont. I mean here you got a president who ENDORSED white supremacy, again and again. Even the KKK was happy with his backtracking speech and praised him and here you are, with your head so far up your behind, you still argue there is no evidence Trump is racist. How does one even begin to have a sound discussion with someone so deliberately blind, like you?

As a disclaimer to what I’m about to say, let me state emphatically that I despise Trump as a person and as a president. I’d support his impeachment, principally for the illegal bombing of Syria and perhaps for the wars he’s about to start. He’ll no doubt rack up more impeachable offenses before his first term is up. Out of a field of terrible choices, I elected to vote for Jill Stein principally because of her anti-war stances despite my disagreements with her on economic and domestic policy.

Trump may indeed be a racist, but I don’t think the evidence is as convincing as Mehdi Hasan makes it seem. Furthermore, I reject the Left’s effort to characterize the political battle lines as the racists on one side and the anti-racists on the other.

I am a non-interventionist libertarian and I’ve become sensitive to the mislabeling of good people as bigots by some leftists. I recall Ron Paul being erroneously libeled as a bigot during his 2008 and 2012 campaign. To be clear, I don’t think anyone in Trump’s orbit are good people, but some on the left seem to vest certain power in weaponizing the term “racist”, “nazi” or “white supremacist” in ways that make it impossible for them to seriously consider the arguments of those they disagree with.

I’ve heard it stated that it is racist to compare the Antifa Left to the White Nationalist Right, or to suggest that Antifa had some culpability in the violence in Charlottesville, even though there is amble evidence to support this assertion. To criticize a violent group on the far left is not to endorse a radical group on the far right.

I disparage both groups and I’ve been trying to argue for the libertarian, natural rights alternative. I caution ya’ll against thinking that labeling your opponents as “racists” is sufficient to refute their ideas. I further caution against using the term too broadly to describe your political opponents who are to your right whose views warrant serious consideration and thoughtful refutation rather than casual dismissal as the ravings of a bigot.

The white nationalists who gathered in Charlottesville are undeniable racists, yet I urge against drawing too sweeping a conclusion about contemporary politics. They still represent a very small minority even among the American Right, and to suggest otherwise is just hysteria.

I will fully admit that I have come very slowly to the conclusion that Trump is a racist – and largely because that term is overused and reminiscent of the boy’s cry of “wolf”.
All people have prejudice based on many factors like age, race, gender, hairstyle, manner of dress, hygiene. Categorization of people you don’t know is to be human. Learning about an individual takes effort. Labeling them as racist without taking that time does you and the label of ‘racist’ a disservice and dilutes its power and effectiveness.

Of course, “Joseph” was Pharoah’s slave. Genesis 47. Appointed by Pharoah to rule over a Nation of Hebrew Slaves — FOR 400 YEARS. In this sense, Trump is Moses.

Keeping his goals while noting his failures, the next generation tried again with a revised strategy, and this time they succeeded. The result became known as the postwar liberal international order. [AKA NEW WORLD ORDER]

The founders of the order embraced cooperation with like-minded powers, rejecting isolationism and casting themselves as player-managers of an ever-expanding team. They bailed out the United Kingdom, liberated France, rehabilitated Germany and Japan, bound themselves to Canada and Mexico, and more. And for seven decades, the allies were fruitful, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty [rich].

Perhaps no group has been more flummoxed by the Trump era than U.S. allies, who awoke last November to find Washington no longer interested in playing the game, let alone managing the team. Having spent more than half a century believing American promises of open-ended support and basing their identity and essential national policies on it, the major U.S. allies couldn’t return easily to a self-help system, even if they wanted to—which none of them do.

Medhi Hasan, were you even born here. Can you speak to racism through the eyes of an African American outside of what you’ve read or seen on TV. The same ones that are screaming rascist at Trump are the same ones that will continue to bomb countries with your namesake with no regard after they’re back in power. You know why, because they smile in your face, but in reality you’re also niggers. That’s real racism, not the banchee screams at these so called protests.

This article is pure bullshit! I watched his news conf., and he denounced the violence on BOTH sides! The ‘white supremacists had a permit, antifa, blm did not.
They have the right to free speech regardless of whether or not you agree with them. They are all being manipulated by the deep state of democrats and RINOs. Keep the divisiveness up! Only makes support for OUR president stronger! #MAGA

OH! And the pimped out whores for wars media makes a BIG DEAL about a few people protesting their discomfort at having to compete for life support resources by elimination of competition on sight discrimination….

BUT IT’S NOT VIOLENT WHEN WE SEND $38 BILLION OF OUR EARNINGS TO ISRAEL FOR THE PURPOSE OF GENOCIDE TO STEAL LAND

BUT IT’S OK TO ALLOW WALLSTREET THIEVES TO ROB AMERICANS OF HOMES AND PRODUCTIVITY BY THE TRILLIONS

BUT IT’S OK TO ALLOW ELECTED JERKS TO FALSIFY EVIDENCE TO GET AMERICANS KILLED IN A FRAUDULENT WAR

AND IT’S OK TO SET AN EXAMPLE TO THE WORLD BY TRAMPLING ON THE CONSTITUTION AND RENDITIONING AMERICANS AND PLACE TORTURE CAMPS IN CUBA

AND IT’S OK FOR ELECTED WHORES IN CONGRESS TO SIGN A PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY AND IMPRISON OR THREATEN AMERICANS WHO PROTEST THE RIPOFF

AND IT’S OK TO HAND OVER ALL THE MONEY TO FOREIGN POLICY EXTORTION ARTISTS WHILE MAINSTREET INFRASTRUCTURE CRUMBLES

Why do the GOP pursue a hardline on incarceration and healthcare and anti-public sphere if not for RACIST reasons?

The GOP set the stage for Trump by adopting Atwater’s “Southern Strategy”

This is the racial basis which is added to the oligarchical class war contained GOP neo-liberalism.

“Race and the Origins of American Neoliberalism”

by Randolph Hohle

“Why did the United States forsake its support for public works projects, public schools, public spaces, and high corporate taxes for the neoliberal project that uses the state to benefit businesses at the expense of citizens? The short answer to this question is race. This book argues that the white response to the black civil rights movement in the 1950s, ’60s, and early ’70s inadvertently created the conditions for emergence of American neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the result of an unlikely alliance of an elite liberal business class and local segregationists that sought to preserve white privilege in the civil rights era. The white response drew from a language of neoliberalism, as they turned inward to redefine what it meant to be a good white citizen. The language of neoliberalism depoliticized class tensions by getting whites to identify as white first, and as part of a social class second. This book explores the four pillars of neoliberal policy, austerity, privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts, and explains how race created the pretext for the activation of neoliberal policy. Neoliberalism is not about free markets. It is about controlling the state to protect elite white economic privileges.”

After watching this my main question is where the hell were the POLICE!!!

Put together all the footage. Identify anyone you can that committed a crime. Charge them and if you convict them give them the largest monetary and most community service hours you can. Make both side clean the place up and pay for all the over time and other costs to the city.

The oligarchs are very afraid the anti-war left and anti-war right will unite together and demand the US end its perpetual war spending policy. They use the same tactics of divide and conquer they used during the Vietnam war. It was called COINTELPRO. The same tactics still being used in demonstrations across America today. The evidence is everywhere if you know what to look for.
From Wikipedia:

COINTELPRO (derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and often illegal,[1][2] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations.[3]
FBI records show that COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive,[4] including anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists of the Civil Rights Movement or Black Power movement (e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Black Panther Party), feminist organizations, independence movements (such as Puerto Rican independence groups like the Young Lords), and a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, neutralize or otherwise eliminate” the activities of these movements and especially their leaders.[5][6] Under Hoover, the agent in charge of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan.[7] Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs.[8] Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of Martin Luther King’s phones “on a trial basis, for a month or so”,[9] Hoover extended the clearance so his men were “unshackled” to look for evidence in any areas of King’s life they deemed worthy.[10]”

The only parts of the “truth” – contrary to your bizarre and sick hallucinations – are that two police officers died in the accident. They were in a helicopter flown to monitor the white nationalist march and counter-protests. Specifically, the helicopter was detailed to support the motorcade carrying Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

The official statements thus far:

“National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson said the cause of the crash had not been determined. The NTSB is sending investigators to the scene, he said.”

“Federal investigators will issue an update in a few weeks about what they find. But it could take the board a year or longer to decide a probable cause of the crash and make recommendations about how to avoid another one.”

Your own take on the incident is the product of a mind given to intergalactic flights of pure fantasy, despicable bouts of Lady Macbeth handwashing and sick Trumpite apologetics for neo-Nazi skinheads.

Poly/Sci Professor Swain of Vanderbuilt University tells the inconvenient truth about the racist roots of the Democratic Party. History you should know but probably don’t. Well presented 5-minute tutorial

While Democratic party did support slavery, Republicans actually engaged in a strategy to court white racists after the civil Rights act. This was called ‘the Southern Strategy’ and it is a well accepted fact and not an opinion. About 10 years ago RNC chairman apologized to NAACP for this.

You obviously didn’t watch the Professor Swain’s video. She addresses that. Democrat President Lyndon Johnson said he would have the “all the N****ers voting democratic in 200 years.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N_RxUXwpVI

No the video doesn’t address Southern strategy, but implies that it is some slander against Republicans by Democrats. Again, Southern strategy is something that Republicans admitted to. Google “RNC chairman apologized for Southern strategy” and see for yourself.

Not only that, but in 1981 interview, Republican strategist Lee Atwater gave away how Republicans use dog whistle politics to appeal to white racists.

Again, these are facts and not opinions. The reason why Republicans are associated with racism is because that is what they actually wanted. It was a goal of Republicans for people to think of them as covertly racist, and they succeeded.

The video is correct about the Democratic party. However, it fails to note that, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many of the racist Democrats of that time went over to the Republican party. The Republicans of today are a far cry from the Republicans of Lincoln’s time.

Partisan bickering about which party is or has been more racist is totally useless. Our country’s racial history is much more complex and nuanced than that.

We will not find solutions that elevate all Americans with partisan bickering and racially divisive politics. But few people doing the bickering want solutions. They want to “win” the argument to score points for their “side.”

“They’ve built their own prison, so they exist a state of schizophrenia. They’re both guards and prisoners and as a result they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made, or to even see it as a prison.”

You are a very sick man. As you very likely do not fully grasp the full sickness of the contents of your warped and fevered mind, I’ll do you the favour of slightly re-writing your statement for you so that you and others – hopefully involving medical staff – can see you inner skinhead explicitly and publicly exposed.

“The Jews strategically escalated protests involving neo nazis

and by the Jews’s own reasoning, neo nazis are violent irrational extremists

so violent outcomes are not surprising, they serve the agenda of denormalizing racism, and the victims can be mourned at Jewish candlelight vigils

not to say anything is wrong with this strategy … but use those oh-so-educated-and-astute systems thinking skills to see the broken eggs in the Jewish omelette”

You’ve completed the cycle, egged on by John Brennan and fake news sites NYT, WaPo.

“”John Brennan on Thursday recalled being asked a standard question for a top security clearance at his early CIA lie detector test: Have you ever worked with or for a group that was dedicated to overthrowing the US?

“”I froze,” Brennan said during a panel discussion about diversity in the intelligence community at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual conference. “This was back in 1980, and I thought back to a previous election where I voted, and I voted for the Communist Party candidate,….””

Thanks Mehdi for elucidating Trump’s past. It makes clears that he is a bonafide racist and far longer than I realized. I was listening to Dr. Sheldon Solomon’s lecture “Election 2016 Fatal Attractionhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17oXQnIVO_Q and he talked about the psychology of Trump and his followers through the writing of Erich Hoffer’s 1951 book “The True Believer”. It is astonishing that Hoffer has described the behavior of both Trump and his followers in such detail that no psychology could fathom and Hoffer is not a psychologist. Here are the main quotes taken from Dr. Solomon’s lecture from Hoffer’s book

The primary qualifications for a leader:

“Audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials)…the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world [and] some deliberate misrepresentation of facts”

“faith in the future via identification; the process by which the individual ceases to be himself and becomes part of something eternal. Charismatic leaders, need not be exceptionally intelligent, noble, or original”

The primary driving force among Trump’s followers:

“The primary impetus for all populist movements is a critical mass of frustrated and disaffected citizens subject to grave economic and/or psychological insecurity “in desperate need of something…to live for.” Such citizens are thus prone to unwavering dedication and loyalty to a leader who confidently espouses a cause that infuses their lives with a sense of worth and meaning”

“Mass movements also require an external enemy to enable the charismatic leader to direct/deflect the rage and righteous indignation of the frustrated and disaffected followers toward a tangible scapegoat, an individual or group of individuals designated as an all-encompassing-repository of evil who must be subdued or eradicated”

Finally: “All active mass movements strive…to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside of it…It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts…which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he DENIES THEIR EXISTENCE”

As far as I’m concerned, the above quotes is the definitive answer to our CHRONIC social ills that affects us in ways too numerous to mention. There is no doubt that the vast majority of the masses are vulnerable to credulity, deception, stupidity, and lies hence willing to believe anything. So no matter what is said of Trump and his racist followers via the news media , it’s safe to say our political system is psychologically dysfunctional hence one of the major impediment that brings the evolution of humanity at a snail’s pace.
But just as Trump brings out the worst in many, we need a leader that can bring out the best. Unfortunately, the Democratic party is just as dysfunctional as the GOP.

the hell it is. The GOP is an efficient machine – so much so I’ve at times wondered if they all wear a chip that receives updates from someone at their central command hooked up to the internet like an iv telling them how to spin any news event that might damage even smudge the image of their alternate reality. Even their disagreements come across scripted.

That paragraph of Trump’s abuses is beautiful, and the thrust of your article is mostly sound. Nonetheless, you neglect small signs of a paradox that is very important to understanding racism at all: it is racist to denounce white racism. Because racism isn’t all whites, and even racism by whites is not always racism for whites. That is what Trump’s comment about the yarmulkes indicates.

I’ll admit, it is so weird it is hard to believe, even when you know: white racists often (usually?) don’t even consider themselves the race on top. They’ll start going on about how Asians have a higher IQ or the Jews are better at accounting or whatever. Which, to non-racists, is freaking confusing: I mean, if you want me to go stand under that dippy swastika banner you ripped off from north India, you have to start by telling me that I alone am the pinnacle of all creation, the living image of God, and that every love handle and varicose vein is a direct sign of my superiority over all creation. If you think I’m going to go over there to stand third class behind the descendants of “coolies” imported by railroad barons looking for cheap labor, I’m going to think what kind of racial supremacist is this???

And yet that kind of self-loathing is a constant throughout the racist groups. You have the Kdaptists of the Christian Identity movement who try to trick God into thinking they’re Jews so they get to be the master race. You have the jerkoffs who celebrate the loveliness of their fair white skin by defacing themselves with a bunch of random Norse letters. You have the world’s dumbest terrorists who almost inevitably go out and find themselves a “race traitor” or some other kind of white guy to kill in the name of white power. I mean, the whole world thinks these people are scum, and that includes them themselves!

So we can denounce Trump for racism, but not necessarily for white racism. As he hands off everything to Jared Kushner, the kid who had to move out of his bedroom so Netanyahu could sleep over, as Congress deliberates making it illegal to boycott Israel while not contemplating any action against those who boycott North Carolina, we might have to look for a weird sort of racism indeed – a racism by proxy that we would never think a person could believe.

How strange is it that Trump, who was born so recently after the U.S. defeated the Nazis, would support them? And with a Jewish son-in-law? Just keep your mouth shut, Kushner, and rake in those racist dollars!

America and race are inseparable no matter who is president or whether a statue stays or goes. I am part Cherokee and they often fully adapted runaway slaves into the tribe. I may be part black? There is also a very good black basketball player with the same names as mine, a legacy of slavery? It was Major Alexander Cowan that fired double canisters and stopped the last forward motion of Pickets Charge at Gettysburg , other distant surnames/relatives may have been on the receiving end of this cannonade.

I personal seek to understand the history and importance of race in ways to steward a better future and bind US as a Nation. Confrontation is a good catalyst for but poor provider of such resolution and “restitution” not as payment for past but as a down payment on the future.

I suspected that even after laying out all the evidence for trump’s racism and doing the hard work of linking all the allegations to specific, well-sourced evidence there will still be a group in your comments section who will vehemently try to rationalize Trump’s comments as “crude talk” or “political naivete” or something much more excusable than grotesque monstrosity it actually is. I just hope that a lot of these guys aren’t actually Americans otherwise we have a really serious problem in this country.

It is not racist to be fair to racists. It is not racist to learn what happened before assigning blame. If Antifascist are guilty for some of the violence in Charlottesville than it isn’t racist to point that out.

I hate Trump but I keep finding myself in position where I am defending him against dishonest media attacks. In this case, media is using a dishonest tactics of “sacred cows” and “guilt by association”.

The fact that you’re assigning blame to “Antifascist [sic]” and assuring us that blaming counter-demonstrators “isn’t racist” — all while railing at the “dishonest media” — suggests to me that you don’t hate Trump at all. You sound like the quintessential Trump supporter. You even equivocate like he did during his press conferences about Charlotteville.

What is it that Trump actually said at that conference that you find objectionable? Please quote him exactly rather than pharapraseing.

And if antifascist did something wrong then they are to blame for it. That is truism more basic than common sense. Objective facts do not change just because you don’t like one side and love the other. In fact, there are Antifa groups that openly advocate and practice violence. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that they might have committed some violence?

Are you totally devoid of logic? If -> then statements are not fallacies. And really, you think that two statements together make a “pretzel”? I suggest critically examining what you write before you hit ‘send’

This was an incredibly well-written, well thought out piece that I am sharing with all of my friends and colleagues. Trump has always been a racist. I don’t know why people in the public sphere have been so reluctant to admit that. I applaud you for your bravery.

Trump sickens me. Point blank. His scripted speech “disavowing” the actions that transpired in Virginia was so empty. It seemed like someone was standing behind him with a rifle forcing him to read off that Teleprompter. I cry for America…and the world.

The word “racism” used to mean something, but it’s become so popular and diluted now that everyone uses it and it doesn’t mean anything. Case in point, think how Mr. Hasan would respond to any of these questions: Is a white person who advocates for issues that affect the white population (for example, the opioid overdose epidemic) a racist? How about a black person? Are most white people in America racist? Are most white people in America racist without realizing it? If a white person says “no blacks” in a dating ad is that person racist? How about if a black person says “no whites”?

Does Trump have his own personal biases? Undoubtedly. Is it fair to describe these as racist? Absolutely. Is doing this constructive in any way? No. Is Trump in the KKK or does he target non-white races for harm? No.

This article is old news that is often repeated by many news outlets that I’m surprised to find repeated again on The Intercept, a news website that prides itself on taking a non-partisan stance that focuses on breaking stories from leaks and going into detail behind the headlines you get from other major news media.

So he wouldn’t rent to black people in New York? Unfortunately many have the perception that blacks drive down real estate value. If you look at property values I’m sure this proves to be true in cases (for a variety of socio-economic reasons, nothing to do with anything “inherent” in any socially-constructed “race”). People understand there is a difference between a spoiled rich guy motivated by maximizing his real estate profits and a guy who burns a cross while he’s dressed in a sheet. If you’re going to call both racist and not follow that up with a four-year university education then you’re doing no favors for that concept.

If you’re going to do a critique on Trump and his history there are much more revealing and constructive lenses you can use besides race.

Mr. Hasan: do you think people are ever not going to have biases against other groups of people?

You are blind if you refuse to see the relevance of the article above to what is happening in our country. And you are severely malinformed about many other points you raise.

Is doing this constructive in any way? No.

Chronicling Trump’s long history of racism is necessary to debunk people who try to portray him as anything else.

Is Trump in the KKK or does he target non-white races for harm? No.

Whether or not Trump himself dons the white hood is irrelevant to the fact that he demonstrably DOES target non-white races for harm. Some of that history is in the piece above. One example just since he’s assumed office is the increase in bombing in Yemen, a country filled with non-white people. I’m pretty sure that even you would agree that bombing falls under the rubric of harm.

The Intercept, a news website that prides itself on taking a non-partisan stance …

Is this the first story you’ve read here? Because anyone who has been reading here even as recently as during the election would know that the above claim is a complete fallacy. In fact, laughable in the extreme….and that’s NOT necessarily a bad thing. Here is Greenwald on the fallacy of “objective” reporting:

I don’t think anyone contends that what has become (rather recently) the standard model for a reporter — concealing one’s subjective perspectives or what appears to be “opinions” — precludes good journalism.

But this model has also produced lots of atrocious journalism and some toxic habits that are weakening the profession. A journalist who is petrified of appearing to express any opinions will often steer clear of declarative sentences about what is true, opting instead for a cowardly and unhelpful “here’s-what-both-sides-say-and-I-won’t-resolve-the-conflicts” formulation. That rewards dishonesty on the part of political and corporate officials who know they can rely on “objective” reporters to amplify their falsehoods without challenge (i.e., reporting is reduced to “X says Y” rather than “X says Y and that’s false”).

Worse still, this suffocating constraint on how reporters are permitted to express themselves produces a self-neutering form of journalism that becomes as ineffectual as it is boring. A failure to call torture “torture” because government officials demand that a more pleasant euphemism be used, or lazily equating a demonstrably true assertion with a demonstrably false one, drains journalism of its passion, vibrancy, vitality and soul.

Worst of all, this model rests on a false conceit. Human beings are not objectivity-driven machines. We all intrinsically perceive and process the world through subjective prisms. What is the value in pretending otherwise?

The relevant distinction is not between journalists who have opinions and those who do not, because the latter category is mythical. The relevant distinction is between journalists who honestly disclose their subjective assumptions and political values and those who dishonestly pretend they have none or conceal them from their readers.

Moreover, all journalism is a form of activism. Every journalistic choice necessarily embraces highly subjective assumptions — cultural, political or nationalistic — and serves the interests of one faction or another. […]

But ultimately, the only real metric of journalism that should matter is accuracy and reliability. I personally think honestly disclosing rather than hiding one’s subjective values makes for more honest and trustworthy journalism. But no journalism […] has any real value unless it is grounded in facts, evidence, and verifiable data. The claim that overtly opinionated journalists cannot produce good journalism is every bit as invalid as the claim that the contrived form of perspective-free journalism cannot.

If you’re going to do a critique on Trump and his history there are much more revealing and constructive lenses you can use besides race.

You may have missed it, but this past weekend a young woman lost her life when a white supremacist drove his car, at high speed, into a group of people who were counter-protesting his political views. That alone makes this article about Trump and his history relevant.

Human beings will never be free of biases, it’s part of what makes us human, but we have been shown to be capable of change, even if it is excruciatingly slow for those whose lives are put at risk on a daily basis due to the prejudices of people like Trump and the people in positions of great power he has surrounded himself with. That fact also makes this examination worth pursuing, no matter how much hand waving people like you engage in.

I’m glad you quoted Greenwald — I’ve been following him since pre-Intercept and he’s the reason why I’ve been reading The Intercept since its inception. I think you’ve been “triggered” by a lot of what I’ve said and missed my points.

Correct me if I’m wrong but most of your points fall into the category of “it’s necessary and accurate to call Trump a racist.” First of all I agree with you that many of his actions and past stances can accurately be described as “racist,” as Hasan repeatedly chronicled even though these have been widely detailed before and are used to support a main narrative about Trump in a lot of mainstream media (I’m mostly familiar with the PBS Newshour and can say the Trump-racist connection is a very prevalent and emphasized narrative).

The question I’m raising that’s relevant for your points here is, for most white Americans who aren’t well-versed in race theory — and especially those who support Trump — is using the term “racist” the way Hasan does constructive? It’s easy and justifiable to call someone who doesn’t want a Lee statue to be removed racist, even if that person believes that whites and blacks should have equal access to wealth and opportunity from the moment of their birth. But once you call that person a racist, even if you can accurately support it, you are sending him/her into the arms of Trump or worse.

Regarding racism and whether or not it’s a constructive lens for examining Trump: take any rich white guy from NYC from Trump’s generation and I’m sure you could make exactly the same race critique that Hasan did. My view is that a broad socio-economic generational critique does not drill down to any significant depth into Trump more than it would anyone else of his ilk. If you want to understand Trump strategically or investigate his improprieties there are much more constructive and relevant issues to look at/lenses to use.

I didn’t go into much detail because it wasn’t a main point , maybe I even expressed myself poorly, but what I said about The Intercept having a non-partisan history can be summed up well by what you quoted from Greenwald, “… the only real metric of journalism that should matter is accuracy and reliability…no journalism…has any real value unless it is grounded in facts, evidence, and verifiable data.” In other words, if there is a narrative that’s advocated by different journalists at The Intercept, it’s a fact-driven narrative instead of the other way around.

First off, I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing. It would be “racism” by definition, but it is true that racism by a black person is not the same as racism by a white person. That’s something a lot of people don’t seem to get. There’s a power differential — an actual case of something that can be described as “false equivalence”.

I wanted to point out how the word “racism” is used to describe everyone from whites who don’t know they’re racist to members of the KKK. Sure you can legitimately use “racism” to describe both, but understanding why that is accurate requires some serious open-mindedness and study of the issue. Most people don’t have the time and/or inclination for this. They can understand why the KKK is racist but to understand institutional racism takes a lot more time. One of my arguments is that when Hasan uses the term “racist” in the broader sense he is doing more alienation than converting. He’s doing a service for those of us who like to have academic debates but he’s exacerbating the problem for those of us “on the ground.”

I dont know, racism for Donald would be sharing the spotlight. I’d say he’s a crude and impulsive communicator whose pandering to white supremacists and keeping people like Bannon nearby is more about being an opportunist than having any passionate beliefs or agenda about race or social issues. He’s apparently a tv addict that knows his trends and wanted to be president.

As president, I think he’s easily manipulated into making decisions against the majority of the people in this country because for one he doesnt have enough interest or patience to look into any of what he’s being suggested/ told to support or take down, but also he thinks and is probably being told by his advisers that he could never win “the left” over. There’s also likely excessive flattery involved in convincing him.

While we’re stuck with him, if at all possible, I think its a good idea to try to figure out how to win him over to more people friendly ideas, policies and most importantly advisers.

I’ll add that although obnoxious, Scaramucci is a better fit for Trump than Bannon. There’s a consistency between the two in personality and understanding that Trump doesn’t have with Bannon or anyone else, in my opinion. He needs that. He comes across as disconnected and/or in conflict with everyone including who he surround himself with.
Anyway, not as an answer to all things but I think Scaramucci would be positive influence on Trump and his adminstration definitely where the racism issue is concerned.

Asking you if it seemed like I was complimenting him is suddenly changing my mind? Using a wave of white supremacy as an opportunity to gain power and money is not good thing.

I didnt intend anything I said to be a compliment or an escape route. I was saying what I thought motivated him and that it wasnt race, (he is for himself ) and that being worth mentioning only as a suggestion for how reach him if there is any possibility of doing that at all, which is also why I mentioned Scaramucci.

He comes across as disconnected and/or in conflict with everyone including who he surround himself with.

The biggest reason for that is because he fails to understand something that has been an integral part of racists since reconstruction. Trump wears his racism like a badge. The rest of them understand the value of concealing the overt nastiness and hatred in order to better advance their agenda. Writer Steven Thrasher laid this out quite succinctly in a series of tweets:

Steven Thrasher @thrasherxy Aug 14

6. White supremacy has a pretty simple definition in America: only active KKK membership is “racist.” Any other kind of racism goes.

“And as I reflect on the full sweep of his 92 years, it seems to me that his life bent towards justice,” Obama said. “Like the Constitution he tucked in his pocket, like our nation itself, Robert Byrd possessed that quintessential American quality, and that is a capacity to change, a capacity to learn, a capacity to listen, a capacity to be made more perfect.”

When the first black POTUS eulogizes the KKK senator Byrd, racism is dead.

“When the first black POTUS eulogizes the KKK senator Byrd, racism is dead.”

We would like to believe that–we wanted to believe a lot of things about Obama. As the events of Charlotteville show, racism is not dead at all. It is so useful to the ruling powers that it is allowed to flourish. Here we are, fighting each other over confederate statues, while a tiny minority continues to hoard the wealth of the nation, unmolested.

There are two different questions that media treats as one : 1) who has better views and 2) who is guilty for violence in Charlottesville. Two sides can be equally guilty in an incident even if one side is racist and the other is anti-racist. Pointing that out doesn’t make you racist. Racist people are not automatically guilty by default of everything that happens in their presents.

*also btw, Trump’s new-found religion of poosy-grabbing prosperity Gospels is a little ‘change’ . .. I can recall a time when he was throwing coke-parties at Club 51 and banging cocktail waitresses two at a time.

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
and close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

This is almost the exact same thing I have been saying about George W. Bush since Katrina. — Deadheded

The biggest difference wrt to the racism of these two distinct offerings from the republican stable is that the Bushes have fully embraced the value of concealing their racism behind the opaque trapdoors of what passes for their beautiful minds.

Almost everyone I’ve talked to says, ‘We’re gonna move to Houston.’ What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas… Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality, and so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (as she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them. — Barbara Bush discussing refugees from hurricane Katrina

The poem snippet was crazily spot on. I first thought it was a play on lyrics from a song by the band Rush: “Xanadu.” Instead I found they’re both taken/inspired from poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; bah’s is directly from the poem “Kubla Khan,” who was the great grandson of Genghis Khan.

Has there been any discussion about Southern Heritage, the Confederacy and Historic Preservation anywhere in the Press? Preservation is used by all sorts of entities to market cities and areas of cities in economic decline. Perhaps the Intercept could address Historic Preservation in the context of the current push to remove Civil War statues as certainly architectural structures have similar roots of cultural expression as oppression.

Those statues were not put up directly after the civil war, they were erected during times of racial tension in the early 1900’s . Architectural structures from the time period are not even remotely the same. I am from the south, my family owned plantations and fought in the civil war for the south. Most of these monuments need to be taken down and put in a museum. They have no place in city centers.

I agree. Why is so much of the media coverage inferring DT likes or befriends racists? He himself has always, always been a racist. His father taught him all about white supremacy. [See “The Choice” on PBS] And his father is/was his beloved role model.

Racism in the US is evident in the very low numbers of inter-racial marriages.
Citizens in business as managers and execs looking to get promoted, rise up, etc, have a real tough time when their spouses are a different race.
Wallstreet actually promotes racism with their corrupt currency system that forces people to compete for life support. This has people competing with each other and racism plays right into this as a way to eliminate competition.

As long as the current currency system is in play, racism in America will persist.

Mehdi’s favourite subject: RACISM !
Do not bother to argue with a non-white Muslim brother as that will definitely brand you a RACIST.
The latest info about the fatal event was a crazy white man using his car as a murder weapon against a white female protester.

The Klu Klux Klan was and is a Terrorst group before there was ever a terrorist group!
Nazis was and is a Terrorist group before there was a ever a terrorist group!
White Racist Supremacist was and is a Terrorist group before there was ever a terrorist group!
It’s just Historical FACT!
In fact, they are Mother, Father and the Offspring of those who invented Terrorism!
Alt Right is just a cute/ugly “Public Relations Name” and the “Terrorist Tent” that they now all reside under!

I find your article full of misrepresentations, less than half-truths and outright lies. Like him or not, at least report the truth. I suppose he never received an award with muhammad ali and rosa parks, right? Your supreme leader HRC not only admired, but respected and worshiped Robert Byrd-Exalted Cyclops of the KKK, yet no one seems to mind that and you write all sorts of lies in your article. You are truly a disgrace…

is that so.
seen the msm of the torch march
did not see 1 sig heil, not 1 swastika, not 1 sign, not 1 nazi tattoo, not even a tattoo, nothing…
say a bunch of guys with torches as if they had just got off of work, out of school, or out of the unemployment line.
heard about a nutjob driving his car into protesters, killed a white girl…

I don’t see Trump as so much of a racist, but rather as a bully. He seems to be one of those kids you knew from the 3rd or 4th grade who was always beating up on kids smaller than himself, calling everybody names, ethnic or racial slurs, not so much from hatred as from profound ignorance. A kid who made Cs in every subject, lacked curiosity and empathy, who looked up to nobody other than the older kids who were stronger and meaner than him.

The difference is that almost all of those kids changed as they grew up. Not Trump.

People that know him say he has tremendous empathy. It’s plain as day to ordinary countrymen when he stands up for American workers, as he cancels U.S. participation in TPP, as he defunds Syrian ‘rebels.’

How about you Socialists and Workers Party adherents, National as in NPR, join our Tee-Partei, milt. Meet like-minded progressive leftist hipsters.

Make as much sense to you? Want to keep using your same post-Nuremberg, brush the cooties off onto the nearest innocent bystander, playbook even after your peers used it on Obama and other so called “neo libs” after their popularity numbers fell like the progressive leftist NSDAP’s fell too?

[[[ He seems to be one of those kids you knew from the 3rd or 4th grade who was always beating up on kids smaller than himself, calling everybody names, ethnic or racial slurs, not so much from hatred as from profound ignorance. ]]]

LOL

If you FOIA’ed Trump’s transcripts, you will find the exact opposite situation from what you described.

How about a link to those transcripts? I’d love to see them. My statement was based on observations of Trump’s extremely limited vocabulary as evidenced by his numerous published Twitter posts, his statement that he has never read a book from cover to cover, and the utter vacuousness of his infrequent policy statements. But I might be wrong. Show me the evidence, please!

The only people who they can turn to are toxic, because liberals and centrists frankly don’t appear to resist the emasculation at all.

It should be noted the already-corrupt establishment’s policing was profiling and assaulting minorities long before Trump, and will no doubt continue long after he’s gone.

In the meantime young men in general are killing themselves at an alarming rate, shamed into predictably destructive patterns. Unsuccessful white men particularly are desperately seeking dignity, and turning in the wrong directions to get it because the calculatedly-angry culture as a whole will not help them constructively.

It seems fairly obvious the elite likes the extremes of this raging conflictedness and the hatred it elicits broadcasting its every nuance through the media far more vigorously than it did, say, the Occupy Movement, as the fighting distracts from the corporatism, militarism, imperialism that the Deep State undertakes regardless of whether the government is supposedly left or right wing.

[[[ It seems fairly obvious the elite likes the extremes of this raging conflictedness and the hatred it elicits broadcasting its every nuance through the media far more vigorously than it did, say, the Occupy Movement, as the fighting distracts from the corporatism, militarism, imperialism that the Deep State undertakes regardless of whether the government is supposedly left or right wing. ]]]

You forgot that a government is a corporate entity like WalMart. Psychopaths like Hannibal the Cannibal have been running it for a long time.

PROOF: “In the meantime young men in general are killing themselves at an alarming rate, shamed into predictably destructive patterns” (The linked image reminds me of Spirit Cooking in the kitchen of North Korea’s Kim Long Dong.)

Western left’s ‘cultural turn’ is the 2nd worst defeat for the socialist cause in my book. As a matter of fact it caused all these “white males” to join the Vendée Revolt of Trump. I guess Kochs were surprised breitbart actually managed to pull it off.

Anyway, that’s my subjective opinion. Perhaps because in my country tensions around ethnicty, gender and religion are less prominent historically, so I give that problem less credit.

Huge wealth concentration, patrimonial capital and power, increasing inequality, fascisation of governmental policies will eventually show who will become the locomotive of healthy forces of change. Will it be classic marxist ‘advanced class’ or something different. Untill then, the Brave New World, it is actually still enjoyable.

“accused an American-born Hispanic judge of being “a Mexican”; Common misconception and an imperialist misconception at that: EVERYONE born in Mexico is “American-born.” Same goes for Canadians, Argentinians and anyone born in the continent.
I gaze in pity and wonder at people such as Numrata Randhawa and the likes of her (aka “Nikki” Haley) who serve the Drumpfs, does she really believe the KKK and Ann Coulter will consider her a legitimate adopted-white? Read what happened to others who sought the wanna-be whites route: chief Black Kettle, the Cherokee, the Jews in Europe…

Wow, that’s the stupidest comment I’ve read anytime recently. I didn’t imagine that people were hired to write epitaphs. I thought family members or loved ones might be the ones needed to perform this task. Well done.

American workers and jobseekers remember how Obama giggled while fielding TTP in front of them, giggled while leaving the borders wide open, deliberately. The Democratic joke was to flood the country with illegals and their DREAMers, to do skilled trades while U.S. citizens rotted on doorstoops in the cities and asked for handouts, and their jobles peers in the outskirts did opioids courtesy of an ACA that made them too expensive to employ. They remember.

When 2018 and 2020 roll around, you’re going to be wiping their butts with your flimsy Dem candidates.

Funny, when it was the Mafia and CIA selling dope to people in the inner cities, those people were characterized as criminals. Now that its white honkeys in red states on opioids pushed by big Pharma under the mantra of free enterprise, it is a health crisis. Rather than blame the ACA, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the problem, just say no, as Nancy would say.

Have you also not noticed that under Trump the H1B visa program is still in place for high skill workers, so people can be brought in from India at half what US natives make to write code, while the low paid workers are denied access? Or all the Goldman Sachs alums who form his cadre of economic advisors. Oh, yes, your boy Don is really changing things. And his republican cohorts, having had eight years to come up with an alternative to the ACA, come up empty handed. Not that Donnie boy has any ideas of his own.

Glad you agree that the CIA, and our “war on terror” are enabling the import of opioids. But the chief culprit in the red states epidemic is Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. So your entire argument falls apart.

It is also true that, driven by the pharma industry, there is great pressure to overprescribe these highly addictive pain killers. So it is not a simple matter; there are lots of guilty parties.

The alternative to ACA is no ACA. Just like he and I and others want. Everyone can go back to private catastrophic, the county, Medicaid, high risk pools. It worked then, it can work now, and prices come back down.

He’s working on reversing H-1B abuses, as well as a curtailment for the program. That was Sessions’s as well as Chuck Grassley’s issue too. Both Republicans, BTW.

I was not arguing in favor of the ACA, which was deeply flawed from day one. You and I disagree profoundly on the solution; I strongly favor a single payer system modeled on those of just about every western European country, systems that produce greater longevity at lower cost.

My remark on H1B abuses is based on last week’s announcement by the Administration. Thanks to the intervention of large employers and H1B users like IBM, the program is being curtailed, but only at the unskilled worker level. Pay attention to what happens as opposed to what Donnie says, and you will see for yourself, soon enough, that he is not there for the little man/woman.

I’m no fan of Trump, but this article has one big unfair assumption. This assumes Trump can’t change, be it for selfish reasons or unselfish ones. We know he has changed on one big position- US involvement in Syria. (Now we have troops in Syria, without the permission of Syrian forces (and even attacking them), instead of staying out, or asking permission, or simply targeting IS and other Islamist groups.) There is also a recent example of an older guy with white supremacist beliefs changing as a result of tragedies in his life. My example? Frank Taafe, who went on several media outlets defending his neighbor George Zimmerman- and ran a white supremacist podcast. But, after several relatives died, he appears to have had a change of heart.http://www.rawstory.com/2014/05/former-george-zimmerman-defender-now-says-he-was-guilty-racially-profiled-black-men/

I am no fan of Trump, and might have voted for Clinton over him- if there were only two choices on the ballot and a gun to my head- but I still have hope he can improve. Call me naive or crazy.

The Marxist mouthpieces which comprise the MSM and most politicians refuse to make a distinction between supremacists and nationalists. To them, white people organizing is racist, full stop. Meanwhile, every other racial or ethnic group under the sun is encouraged to segregate themselves and form their own groups. Don’t think that white people don’t notice the blatant double-standard on display. We’re bombarded with stories about minority-exclusive school functions, how whites are to blame for everything wrong in the world, etc.

I think you are lying. Your statement contradicts my twenty seven year experience living with racists in Texas. I recall they did not “debate” or “argue”. They simply expressed their intense desire to commit mass murder with impunity, like their, and my own, ancestors did.

What is he lying about? That popular opinion now has lost any sort of rationality and instead resorts to calling anyone deemed on the Boogeyman “Alt-Right” or even the regular right as racist Nazis. It’s ironically the same argument as labeling all blacks theifs and killers…

Your personal experience of living with racist sounds awful but you can’t use that to judge a massive group of people or else you become just like the racists you hate.

They simply expressed their intense desire to commit mass murder with impunity, like their, and my own, ancestors did.

Are we supposed to feel guilt for something our ansestors did? Mass murder isn’t limited to the slave era you do know…

Yes and let this be an opportunity to remind Intercept readers that the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald wasted thousands of words – he always writes long – to smear Hillary Clinton as the anti-Christ while giving a pass to Trump.

Yet more evidence that the democrats just don’t get it. While it is true that 90% of the US electorate is apparently incapable of realizing that there are viable alternatives to either the democrats or republicans, it is more to the point that Clinton represented a continuation of the downward spiral that most working people in the US find themselves caught up in. Catering to Wall Street and to K Street is clearly not what these people wanted, and Clinton and her party still do not understand that. Many of the people who voted for Trump did so out of a feeling of desperation.

You should print up and read what he said, rather than write an entire article about what you think he said, what you think he MEANT, combined with a great big lump of grievance and hyperbole based on your own misguided, irrational assumptions about how you think things should be.
Trump has his faults, but in this case he’s correct: That was a violent brawl and everybody involved needs to be held accountable regardless of their political views.
I realise it’s unusual for leaders these days to state an honest opinion based on facts, rather than issue statements that pander to what people want to hear, but you need to get used to it.
Trump took his time to find out what happened, then he stepped forward with an accurate and responsible statement based on facts, even though he knew it would be unpopular.
The West needs more of that sort of character, not less.
Trump may well be racist. But in this case, he’s conducting himself as a leader should, albeit in a rather impolitic and unconventional way.
You should get used to this, because there’s much more heading down the slipway.
Wait until the debt ceiling debate gets going.
Wait until you discover just how broke this nation is, and just what that’s going to do to you.
That’s the point at which you’ll need to sit up and listen carefully and respectfully to what Trump has to say.
Because he’s going to end up your only hope.

At the end of the day, I have to come down on the side of whichever has the best looking guys with the hottest bodies — and so far, that’s the far right. Plus they don’t pander to homos. Pandering is so condescending. The less of it the better.

Antifa is largely a bunch of fat girls. These women are often violent and insane. They might attack you and if you defend yourself it’s OMG YOU HIT A WOMAN! What kind of monster are you? The better looking girls (all two of them) are just live streaming themselves somewhere. They are on their way to some gay bar, where they incorrectly assume they are welcome. Gay bars are 30% straight women now and completely boring. Please go away.

Sorry state of affairs. Seriously. Weimar Republic. Democracy’s death rattle.

lol who in the alt-right is attractive ?? Steve bannon ? Richard Spencer ? the army of unemployed fat 4chan nerds who live in their parents basements ? the only hotties in this situation r the ‘violent leftists’ jacking fascist aesthetics (w/o actually being fascists tho- that’s the important part)

You cannot shame a person in giving up his/her inclinations to racism. You can scream, loud and long, and even call them stupid, ignoramus, moron, Neanderthals, et al. The only way a person examines his/her conscience is whether or not someone taught him/her that.

We have had unlikeable Presidents before; they come and go. The only thing most Americans – most – is not whether or not their President is politically correct in every single statement uttered, but rather what actions he/she would take to help make most Americans’ lives better.

This sounds like a flimsy excuse but all the high minded political wailing on the LEft, all their vicious attacks against the white middle class workers, all the vicious hate rhetoric coming from the Alt-Left and the myopic views of left leaning media, and all the wailing about political correctness and racism, bigotry, et al…will not make a dent at the ballet box.

The voter will vote for that person that addresses their own personal problems affecting their families. I was one of those former Dems that voted for Trump. Not because I liked him or admired him, but because HRC was the absolute personification of Elitism, with Contempt dripping from the corners of her mouth as she slammed half of America with her ‘deplorable’ comments.

You see, that’s bigotry, too.

Pray for the racists,the bigots, the Elites who don’t have a clue what the average workers must confront daily. The last thing that is on his/her mind is racism… they’re just trying to keep their heads above water.

I pray for Trump but also for all the Left who despises the common worker, for the left leaning media who can’t bother to take the time to really listen to Joe and Sally Jones, but pontificate every night. They are not only boring, they missed a Gold Opportunity to make America better.

And I am not going to apologize for being white. I don’t have a racist bone in my body . We need to stop this unending political correctness.

How screwed up can this country be, when someone can articulate a claim that the left is opposed to the working class, when it is in fact the left that has so long championed workers rights, labor unions, vocational education, social security, medicare, among the many fundamental causes of the left. Meanwhile the conservatives, and of late the neoliberals, have championed the right of the elites to make as much money as they can, ignoring the rights and dignity of the workers, even of the environment.

That the main stream media champion the causes of their corporate sponsors, who happen at the moment to be opposed to Trump is no reason to call them left leaning. At one time, that was true, but no longer.

Well nobody ever lost money in America betting on the logical and moral incoherence of the white working class in America.

Republicans as a political party haven’t given a shit about the working class since at least Eisenhower. You’d think that would be widely known fact in America, amongst everyone, because it is.

What the GOP cares about is the rhetoric of white grievance and pitting people in the same class (regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or gender) against one another with appeals to demonize others for their declining standard of living. Same for neoliberal Dems. Last thing in the world the existing political parties in this nation want is a united class conscience or strong unions in this country.

Thus the decimation of unions and the concurrent stagnation of wages over the last 5 decades in America and the rise of masses of not overly bright working class Americans (particularly “white” ones) who think that’s a function of “political correctness” or too much “affirmative action” instead of a concerted bipartisan effort to decimate the legal underpinnings and organizational ability of unions, and drive down American wages for the working class. This is common knowledge to anybody who actual studied American economic policy over the last 5 decades or American history generally.

http://www.unz.com/article/the-de-putin-nazification-of-america/
Brilliant satire by C J Hopkins
Here’s a snippet
“These people are going to need to be shamed, guilt-tripped, and otherwise emotionally manipulated into keeping their Putin-Nazi mouths shut. This isn’t going to work on your actual fascists, but it will work on nearly everyone else, or at least on those Obama voters who didn’t turn out for Hillary Clinton, and those bitter white Bernie Bros who voted for Trump as personal “fuck you” to the Democratic Party. See, odd as this is going to sound, the majority of your Putin-Nazis don’t see themselves as Putin-Nazis. They see themselves, well, as just regular Americans who have lost all faith in the electoral system, and who believe they are living in a sham republic controlled by global corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals who couldn’t care less about them and their families, and whose only allegiance is to a transnational class of corporatist leeches like themselves”

Blah, blah, blah. Sure, “regular Americans” that lost all faith in the electoral system and yet vote for a schlub who is utterly beholden to those same “global corporations” that care so much about the blue collar family. Utter nonsense.

I love articles like this. They show you what the true agenda of the left actually is. Use the charge of racism at all costs to further their own collectivist agenda and it is the Herd mentality at its finest. If you deviate whatsoever from the official “White Nationalist” narrative promoted by left wing news organizations owned by billionaires that are stirring up the rabble for their own political gain, you are instantly labeled as a racist. The hatred I have seen directed towards Trump rivals any degree of hate that I have witnessed anywhere in my lifetime. Exactly where do you think this demonization of Trump and white people in general is going to lead? I’m 50 years old now and cant imagine whats going through the heads of young white people at this time. Being told over and over and over again that you are bad because of your race (again collectivism at its finest) and that you are guilty for the past transgressions from people six generations ago….Its going to turn out bad, because you are just pushing young people into the arms into extremists..thats how it works. These is nothing like pointing the finger at someone else so you can completely ignore the evil and bad things that come from yourself.

Most of the alt right support comes from young whites 15 to 30. Not mellenial not cuckboomers. Generation z. Coming of age in the present day usa.the white nationalist of tomorrow. Their world view came from the net and from their personal experience. I’ve watched with adness young white boys explaining why they may become adults in a race war. Demonizing these youth will come back to haunt us. The last time the white kids got angry.. we had a world war and nukes were used. Don’t alienate the youth.

White people are not being demonized in this article. This article is citing many racist statements and arguments from Trump. Show me any instance of of an influential popular writer, media newsperson, etc, who demonizes the white race.

Basically, your little fantasy has a reality problem: you must either fail to create a “race war” or you must lose to the majority. You would have to create a military state to maintain racism as an authorial object of government. In that far-fetched case, racism would be of minimal subsidiary interest to the capitalist powers funding such an outcome. The youth of this country will crush you and your imbecile fantasies.

Maybe Trump is a racist. Seems plausible. However, the MSM is attempting to frame this to mean that his entire support base is guilty by association, to link all white nationalism with bigotry. Japanese, Chinese, Malaysians, Brazilians, Russians, and every other people under the sun who want to preserve their nations from being invaded and bossed around by foreigners are no less “racist” than us white people, that is if we’re applying the same standards.

All part of the underlying agenda to spark a massive civil war. The tribe first pushed open border policies in order to bring in hordes of immigrants, then hid behind civil rights activism and NGOs in order to brainwash those same immigrants into believing that every wrong committed against them is to be blamed on white people. This is done so that the immigrants will eventually fight the tribe’s battles for them, acting as a sort of 5th column. The ultimate goal is to destroy all Western sovereign nations from within and replace them with a one world government under their control. They’re the biggest racists of all, period.

Trump, as an unapologetic racist, Is acting exactly like he sees himself, as a person in charge of the next racial, class war between the haves and have-nots in this country. It serves his ultimate goal of militia control of every man, woman, and child. There may be blood in the streets before sanity is restored to the seat of the executive office.

All sane and rational people know that Trump is a racist mentally ill idiot. Why did he win in 2016? Because he manipulated the white racists who he knew were so stupid they’d believe anything he said and did. Trump also knows as long as he doesn’t get caught using the N word in public, he can say and do any racist stuff he wants. NOBODY will hold him accountable. Impeach him? That would be “too devisive” (Nancy Pelosi). All that matters is winning the mid terms and in 2020.

What do Trump and his followers want? A race war. Once and for all we’ll take back the country and put those damn n*****s in their place? You want reparations? Shut the f**k up.

In the past, racists used coded racism. Now, Trump has given them permission to do whatever the hell they want.

Trump won the same states that Obama won in ’08 and ’12. Did racists elect a black man whose middle name was Hussein? No. As were the past three elections, Trump’s win was the populist uprising. If the DNC hadn’t colluded against Sanders, he’d be president. The divide and conquer propaganda is designed to keep us from uniting in solidarity against our oppressors.

You could say almost the same for the Republican Party. Republican operatives have spent decades stoking the fires of racial resentment and happily milking that resentment for votes. The problem isn’t Trump; the problem is people who vote for Republicans, somehow thinking that racism is conservatism.

Isn’t it reaally interesting to note that a lot of the politicians businessmen n celebs did not comment on the maidan Nazis of the Ukraine? they have political parties and armed battalions they commemorate a Nazi leader from ww2 as a Hero. John mktumor the singing Vietnam “hero” is seen on maistream media chatting up neo Nazi leaders on his visits there. Hmmm…so all the hysterics based on the car ram tragedy…three faces of American politics. It’s ovious the Internet was the vehicle of Trump’s mind boggling win… Isn’t it funny ALL these social media companies and hosting sites started to filter free speech since then…the deep state realized the MSM propaganda machine was no longer the only sources of info and ideas….so their corporations will now try to stifle the internet on the so shallow pretext of controlling hate speech n extremism. Lol. Chickens are acoming home to roost. My eyes are decieving me the lefty ethno masochist zealots we’re extremely violent as well…

Yeah, that’s a great observation. Marxist leftists were all for the overthrow of Ukraine and installing of a puppet leader by neo-Nazis, yet the MSM deliberately concealed the truth from the American public.

It is still unclear if Comrade Rump actually was elected by the people of the USA and not by an Oligarch in Russia. At least put an asterisk when saying he was ‘elected’ or that he is ‘President’, as saying that unchallenged portrays him as accepted by a majority of US Citizens who voted. This is not the case.

Got hard evidence that Russia tampered with the American elections? Because thus far I’ve seen nothing, absolutely NOTHING, that proves that they did. Sorry, vapid accusations and repeating a lie over and over doesn’t constitute evidence. “Israel” doesn’t even attempt to hide their blatant interference in our political system, yet nobody seems to bat an eye.

It’s far more likely that excesses of the so-called Left and Right are orchestrated by our very own government. I mean young guys with Nazi flags or KKK outfits? Sure….

I have some familiarity with young far right types (only the hot ones), they aren’t that corny. Or stupid. Only FBI or Soros could come up with a photo op that idiotic or frankly out of date. The 4chan/reddit TD crowd is way savvier than that. Fast and smart.

Norman Mailer wrote about being baffled by the extreme behavior on the Left in the 1960s, but it turns out those were FBI agents, lol…. maybe I shouldn’t laugh, it’s a sick game they are playing. But be honest, the Left has been violent and obscene since the French Revolution. Any effort to contain it is of course Fascism. We may be getting just that. Isn’t DOJ investigating the so-called “resistance” — announced right after Trump’s press conference?

I don’t like where any of this is trending at all but I’m not sure what I can do about it either.

Well darlin it’s not so corny, these types (the “alt-right”) do in fact exist all across America. I read on WAPO yesterday some excerpts and proclamations from the Storm Front Newsletter. Initially I thought, oh c’mon these are just a bunch of red necked hillbillies talking loud. Then I thought, maybe not. Of course, you need to try to get a little beyond believing that the CIA are the ghost writers there. Today, DemocracyNow ! announced on their daily news show that the “alt-right” is planning marches and demonstrations all across the nation state by state inch by inch.

Thinking about what you have said, then listening today to Trump’s press call which was so disgustingly atrocious and rubbing more salt in the wound, I began thinking that Bannon was behind this.

Who knows and for what purpose ? My first guess would be to create chaos, perhaps a diversion. Quick ! Need to re-read Naomi Kline – seriously.

Shall we be swept up and swept away in total civil unrest and violence against complete totalitarianism or bend over and play dead? Who can we trust?

*sigh* It’s 2017, right?
I mean, KKK and Nazis marching in the streets?
It can’t be 2017
It’s like they totally missed that episode where *they lost*
Even Godwin came out and said that this would qualify as a corollary to his law…they’re actually Nazis.

The country seems to be filled with all manner of self-serving echo chambers, groupthink tanks, and cult-like feedback loops

It’s one side effect of being overwhelmed with information of dubious quality. It’s easier for people to find and latch onto what feels good and fits with their cognitive biases. They find validation in their social media circles.

KKK. Nazis. It’s corny and stupid, which makes me think it’s some sort of theater brought to you by Soros. Or FBI. Or one of Trump’s countless deep state enemies. They’ll destroy him eventually (we’re only 8 mos in) but replace him with what I shutter to think.

I’m not sure if minorities are still fooled by this good cop / bad cop routine of depicting some establishment politicians as being on their side, while others are rabid racists. The main goal is to keep them invested in supporting the current power system, even if they happen to be on the bottom. The message to them should be: ‘don’t rock the boat and eventually Mr. Trump will be voted out of office and all your problems will go away’. There will be those who persist in believing they face systemic discrimination, who won’t be receptive to the message. But hopefully they are a minority of a minority.

That the Republicans – as elected leaders – condone him, is a burden for which they will – or should – suffer in infamy for a generation.

Other language or behavior wasn’t going to be believable, but it’s still stunning that this person is president.

*****Why, Mr Hasan, is the calling of Elizabeth Warren, “Pocahontas” possibly the most “shocking of all?”

Maybe the media will stop but my guess is that they will not. It’s click-bait.
I guess the media, or I saw it in a couple/few places, has determined that Ivanka and Jared are not the modern & new generation Democrats that are going to moderate Mr Trump.

It stinks at 1600 Pennsylvania and the stench will last until the last Trump is out of the WH.

Keep rubbing it in ? Just let it go ? Forget about it ? So what ? What’s new ? Don’t rock the boat ?

This is no dead horse, so thank you Mr. Hasan for obviously Americans, the corporate media and the entire world needs to be reminded over and over again that Trump is a Nazi gangster and stop pretending otherwise. Not broadcasting and denouncing it from the towers and hilltops is just as bad as being a collaborator. To be so blase is not cool, it is just plain dumb.

Thank you for all of the vastly important links Mr. Hasan, great report !

As I said, beyond hope. I never said that we shouldn’t do anything about Trump’s racism, I said that it’s as clear as it can be and that acting like it’s big news is beyond naive. Trump has been a racist for decades, way before you knew who about him.

The bigger problem with all this is that like global warming/climate change, Trump is not the problem; he’s a SYMPTOM. In other words, the Trump presidency, which includes evils like blatant racism, was created by this right wing society (won’t get into details here, long discussion).

Well Jeff, in fact I did know who about him even b4 ten years ago, and I raged against him and his name when the Baja Trump Towers up the road from me a bit were being planned to go in whilst every rotten real estate developer & politician down here and from Canada & the US were in a promotional frenzy.

Of course, the entire project was a bust, a complete scam – people lost lots of dinero ( we are talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars but so what they were just greedy hoping to buy then sell for max profit a shitty condo located next to the Punta Bandera slough – without even a thought about anyone providing much needed sewage infrastructure, which is typical) & finally a settlement of sorts was made with them. It was all about fast money & greed not to mention disgusting looking at his face on the billboards which ran alongside the Scenic Hwy with that cheshire grin. Boy, you talk about the environment, that project and of course the LNG Plant that did go in were (LNG still is) absolute destroyers of the environment.

Meanwhile what is the point of talking about how Trump is a symptom – I know that, I read counterpunch. But he & his cronies are a huge problem. Further this situation was not just created by a right wing society, it was created by what we call “Democracy” which has morphed into a very weird and scary Kleptocracy moving rapidly to Fascism.

You seem to want to sit on the sidelines and twittle your thumbs…I have to tell you that you are one person I would never walk down a dark alley with, you would just run at the sound of a pin drop and jump at your own shadow.

Oh one more item – we are not “uniformed” as to why Trump is a nazi, Christ – keep telling the story over and over (and shame on the corporate media for up until now really said squat about his rascism) until it is so ingrained in everyone’s little pea brain and people are so pissed off, it will never happen again.

Course, a lot of people voted for him hoping the entire system would collapse…maybe it’s happening.

I think we may be miscommunicating here. I never said that Trump’s racism shouldn’t be mentioned and challenged, I said it’s ridiculous that there needs to be an article below this headline. The headline alone suffices because it’s so obvious.

As to my commitment to what I believe in, suffice to say that I’ve put my life on the line more than once for the natural environment, my No. 1 issue by far. I also physically defended a Black friend from an attack once, though I don’t think the attack was racist (it was because we were punk rockers). So don’t make comments like this about people when you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not afraid to die because I’m not afraid to live, simple as that.

Oh good for you Jeff…just remember you browbeat us to death numero uno calling us naive, let’s see what else that we are beyond naive and uninformed and specifically that I knew nothing about Trump decades ago. I have hated him for decades.So you re obviously the person making assumptions. I realized later I forgot to say shame on the corporate media for not only glamorizing him but also for specifically raising Obama to Sainthood and not a peep on the evil Ice Queen.

Let me tell ya something JEFF the nazis are coming out of the woodwork and he is emboldening them. That is a huge story, he is encouraging them and they are frightening.

We had to run up to the States today, while we were there I had my nails and toesies done. Whilst I sat in a massage chair soaking my footsies in walks this woman swear to god wearing a huge Trump-Pence campaign pin on one side and on the other a USA flag pin. From her ears there dangled these looong earrings with Trump-Pence campaign buttons attached. And she was straight – dressed like she just walked out of Macy’s. I think she was wearing estee lauder. She sat right next to me.

Anyway I was so shocked I said outloud – ‘oh my god, a nazi ! Seig Heil Fraulein !’ Of all the gaul, when there is still blood in the streets. Didn’t bother her. She said to me, ‘I love Donald Trump !’ And I replied “Well you better go give him a blow job because I heard someone is going to cut off his you know what.”

Now I don’t belong to the AntiFa, but I hate nazis. And let me tell you something else JEFF, you are soooo concerned about the environment and yet you are unconcerned that nazis, neo-fascists, racists are the very ones who are destroying it in front of our very own little eyes ? It’s important JEFF. A really really important sequence of events. Racists and nazis/fascists are destroying the environment, call them out for christ sake !

That you don’t even recognize that is too bizarre for me JEFF.

Anyway, I offered to give her a lift over to south east San Diego (Logan Heights) where the brothers could check out her halloween costume.

And frankly, I don’t think you would ever have qualified to ever have belonged to Earth First.

OK, we weren’t miscommunicating. You are a psycho fanatic. Guess what? I hate Nazis too, 1/4 of my family was killed by them during WW II. I’ve marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and worked with the Black Panthers. But because of your fanaticism, you’re blind to the fact that I didn’t say that we shouldn’t do anything about this, and that instead I said that you’re badly uninformed if you need an explanation of why Trump is racist.

But that doesn’t mean that this is the only issue, or even the most important issue. Nor does it mean that only your targeted groups are destroying the environment, in fact far from it. Overpopulation and overconsumption (including consuming things we shouldn’t be like oil) are by far the major causes of environmental destruction, and right wing assholes are not at all the only ones doing those things.

So go back to your myopic world where everything is about your pet issues while humans continue to massively pollute the Earth and kill just about everything on it.

Some of us want facts to back up what’s being said. Some of us wants to know the details behind the situation. Some of us want to come up with an informed opinion. Unlike you Jeff some of us don’t believe white man’s history. Especially the BS about Native Americans being hunter-gatherers only. You need to do a lot more reading before you start commenting as if you know something.

And some of you are obviously very uninformed if you need to be told why Trump fits the definition of being a racist. You should have known that for a long time.

As to white man’s history, it’s YOU who’s the wasichu bub. I’ve got very close friends in AIM and the IITC, and have spent time with traditional people on reservations, and my information comes from both them and what I’ve read. You, on the other hand, read some revisionist crap then spew falsehoods about what was here before white people. I didn’t respond to your comment in the other string because it wasn’t worthy of a response. But now that you’ve brought it up, you falsely responded with irrelevancies about Mexico and the Amazon when I clearly said that I was talking about what is now the U.S. Yes, the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans were agriculturalists who overpopulated as all agriculturalists do — like any other animal, an overabundance of food causes overpopulation — but none of those groups lived in what is now the U.S.

And I never said that Natives here were only hunter-gatherers, I said that they were predominantly so. There was obviously some agriculture, mainly on the east coast and the Pueblo (though the Pueblo disappeared before white people got here). And again, the most densely populated area of what is now the U.S. was between Monterey and San Francisco Bays, and was 10,000 people.

Furthermore, you ridiculously claimed that there is evidence of agriculture in the Amazon rainforest. Talk about being ignorant! Tropical rainforests have been in continual existence for about 200 million years because the ice ages doesn’t reach latitudes as low as the tropics. Because of this, the soils in tropical rainforests are so nutrient depleted that virutally NOTHING can grow out of them; the plants there grow out of each other. If you cut down a portion of these rainforests, they’re gone forever, which is why it’s so critical to protect them. When people try to farm in the Amazon by cutting the forest, they find that they can only grow crops for a year or two before the land becomes sterile.

“The geological evidence comes from measuring layers of Amazonian dark earths (ADEs), soils created by burning, mulching, composting and human waste management. ADEs indicate dense populations and intensive farming. In addition to those soil modifications, the Natives left evidence of canals, artificial ponds and fish weirs, walls and roads—evidence also found in North America. The documented layers of ADE soils in Amazonia appear to have been sufficient to support at least eight million people. Rich ADE sites date from 6,000 years ago.

Archaeologists had already documented domestication by the Amazonian Natives of at least 83 species of plants, including palm and fruit trees, cacao, sweet potato, peppers, pineapple, and manioc. Also, as in North America, tobacco.”

You are correct in that “the soils in tropical rain forests are so nutrient depleted that virtually NOTHING can grow out of them”. But the natives knew how to manage the forest and the soil. They could transform the soil in the ways mentioned above. I would also note that they added carbon and pottery fragments to the soil which allow it to hold nutrients and water. They saw that the land and plants were a renewable resource that could be even healthier than in its natural state if properly manages.

I see no point in continuing to argue about what happened thousands of years ago thousands of miles away, or even how many people were here when white people got here. We have a major difference in attitudes, so we’ll never agree unless one of us changes attitudes, and I know I’m not changing mine.

Your attitude is that humans are superior and we should manipulate nature, including plants and other animals, for our own benefit, and into something we deem to be better, or “healthier” as you put it. You consider other forms of life to be “resources.”

I don’t believe that humans are better or more important than any other form of life — in fact, we are provably less important, because the rest of our planet would get along just fine without us, we are not a necessary part of any ecosystem. I believe that humans should leave plants, other animals, the land, air, and water alone except to the extent that they need to consume them in order to survive. And I believe that other forms of life are fellow beings with just as much right to live and thrive as humans; they are NOT RESOURCES to be exploited. And if you want the Native perspective, all of the Native people I’ve ever heard and read talk about other species as relatives and/or types of people (four-legged people, rooted people, winged people, etc.). They do not look at them as “resources.”

And notice that, assuming everything you said about people in the Amazon 6,000 years ago is true, these cultures are long gone. Only the hunter-gatherers remain. Agriculture is very destructive and is not sustainable. It destroys native plants and habitats by definition, and creates the extreme harm of human overpopulation by providing too much food.

When white people got to the west coast of the U.S., where I live, there were few people, they were all hunter-gatherers, and the land, water, and skies were filled with wildlife. This is vastly superior to anywhere that agriculturalists live, whether they’re white or Native.

Now what about the US economy, the opioid epidemic, imperial wars and inequality of wealth?

Is one supposed to ask when mentioning Trump?

Or should good citizens only associate Trump with racism, xenophobia, Hitler and Mussolini? And Russiagate and N Korea. And anything similar to pussygate as such issues do not really affect people’s lives?

Define rhetorical question.

You can make a dog go berzerk when you learn him to bark after you say ‘Trump’!

And being in such an angry state is a great for those who do not want you to think.

That is how I felt after reading Hasan’s piece. So I didn’t read it.
Instead I wrote this comment.

Yes, but if nobody mentioned this sorry state of 2017 America, then somebody else would complain about the lack of coverage.
My news intake is so well-rounded (or quite well-rounded) that I don’t mind a dose of daily news. I don’t mind reading it & contributing.

It just means, as Glenn Greenwald puts it succinctly, I can cogently be both against Trump and against selective reporting clickbait hatchet jobs.

Look at the publishing history of someone like Mr. Hasan Mr. Mackay and compare it with one of The Intercept’s original journalists like Mr. Greenwald or Mr. Fang. The difference in journalistic integrity is astounding.

Oh my, where to begin. Let’s start with the previous Czar, Osama! Set back race relations at least 50 years in the US because of his racial hatred of police officers and white people. Tried to make every incident involving a black person “a victim”. Michelle was a racist, her papers in college proved that! Press CANNOT get over the fact that Hellary lost, and in turn they lost! Must be hard to wake up every morning with so much “hate” that it spews over in their commentaries. Yep, that would include Mehdi.

I’m no fan of Obama, but, lest we forget, he was called a racist for simply suggesting that police arresting a man who was at least in his 60’s IN HIS OWN HOUSE, made a stupid mistake. Lest we forget, his Department of Justice charged more people for burning a liquor store in Baltimore than those responsible for the death of a prisoner.

One of the most nauseating aspects of all of this is that all of our remaining 6 (corporate) media outlets have, all along, supported this racist sociopathic madman because the coverage boosts ratings–corporate greed at its finest.
CNN set a camera up on the tarmac and let the camera roll for nearly a half hour before Trump’s jet glided into view. PEOPLE OVER PROFITS

One of these bottom feeders named Les Moonves, who runs CBS, while speaking of Trump’s lunacy was quoted as saying:

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”.

This quote perfectly encapsulates everything there is to know about where the Corporate class stands in regards to the Trump presidency and the carnage that is being unleashed in the world because of it.

I just hope that Les Moonves and those like him live long enough to truly regret that type of thinking.

Only problem with Moonves living to regret his thinking is that Moonves is far more insulated from the results of his thinking than those of us scratching out a living here at the bottom of the economic food chain.

You know, this seems to be lacking a discussion of the economic aspects of racism, doesn’ it?

Journalists, opinion formers, members of Congress, and members of the public continue to treat Trump as they would any previous president — they expect their head of government to come out and condemn racism with passion, vigor, speed, and sincerity.

Consider: 43.5 million Americans live below the poverty line. This is an artificially low definition of ‘poverty’ by most measures, about $19,000 for a family of two adults and one child. What’s the racial makeup of this group?

41% white, 28% latino, 22% black, 9% other

Interestingly, these statistics match very closely crime rates of various types when broken down by race. For example, police officers killed by violent criminals – a very close match, including the 2:1 white:black ratio. This points to the close association between poverty and crime, something the alt-right hates to talk about, as they want to blame all crime on the ‘inferior races’ as part of their white supremacy agenda. It’s always worth debunking their nonsense. But that’s not the main point:

Let’s now look at the racial makeup of the 1%, the strata where people like Donald Trump spend their whole life. To enter the top 1% club, a net wealth of about $8 million is required (generally associated with a net income of >$400,000 a year, but only if extensive property and investment holdings go with that income):

96% white, 0.9% latino, 1.4% black, 1.6% other

So this is a group of Americans who probably associate mainly with one another, and they’re almost all white – and of course that fosters racist attitudes among the billionaire class. They like to believe they are there due to merit and hard work rising them to the top – but the truth is, it’s mostly inherited wealth that got them there, though some have done better than others leveraging their inherited wealth into larger fortunes. Regardless, Donald Trump is no outlier when it comes to racist attitudes among this group – Koch, etc. all share that view.

You won’t see the corporate media or the alt-right media in the United States touching on this issue, because it’s not a narrative either likes – corporate media is owned by and is the voice of the 1%, and alt-right racists doesn’t like talking about class issues, because then they’d have to admit that poor whites, blacks and latinos have a lot in common with each other – and, horrors, might be best off if they worked together to promote their own interests. So radical. . . Is that communism? Pffttt….

Now, Donald Trump obviously relied on that 41% of poor whites to help him into power, since he promised them better jobs, etc. That was of course a blatant lie; his administration is basically an ExxonMobil administration and he’s not going to renegotiate NAFTA because that would screw up Exxon’s oil deals with Mexico, as just one example. Gutting clean air and pollution regulations for the petrochemical industry, that’s been his major action in government so far, from the DOE to the EPA, it’s pretty obvious that he’s playing to usual Republican money interests.

Given all this, what’s Trump’s political base? The oil companies are behind him, but they can’t pull in votes – so it’s just the poor ignorant white racists that he can rely on to get behind him as his popularity plummets. Trying to start a war, the usual U.S. presidential response to bad ratings, won’t work out so well, as every other nation on the planet opposes that.

So Trump will just sit and stew in his own foul juices, and the neo-Nazis will march around with their little torches spewing out their regurgitated Nazi-Confederate ideology, and they’ll end up fading into history again. This is what happened with a Trump predecessor, Pete Wilson, the California governor in the 1990s who tried to whip up political support by pounding the racism and immigration drums – soundly defeated – and that’s the way the country will go.

That only leaves the question of who will take his place – the Hillary Clinton Democrats and their allies, who notably financed and supported the neo-Nazis in the Ukraine as part of their neoliberal imperial agenda? Or the Bernie Sanders Democrats, who reject all the neo-Nazis and their allies, both foreign and domestic? That’s still question #1; don’t be distracted by the Nazi clown sideshow.

I would say Sarsour is much more aligned with the Hillary Clinton camp on issues like Saudi Arabia (which she seems to generally support) and Syria (where she promotes the overthrow of Assad). What’s most telling is that Linda Sarsour went after Tulsi Gabbard, one of the very few politicians in Washington who promotes a sane and rational foreign policy. Garbage like this:

Linda Sarsour on Twitter: “.@TulsiGabbard forgets that Assad is a dictator who has killed more Syrians than ISIS. Focuses on ISIS…”
Linda Sarsour on Twitter: “.@TulsiGabbard is way over her head on this foreign policy speech. Missing nuance…”

There aren’t any easy answers, really. . . But in terms of what the U.S. really needs, on domestic issues we need an FDR-style New Deal, and on foreign policy, acceptance of the reality of a new multipolar world order with no dominant superpowers. And Israel and Saudi Arabia, they can sink or swim on their own – both need major reforms.

Nice stamp collection of right–wing quotes, but what we really want to know is where are the police?

When they protest WTO / G8 meetings, the cops and the FBI are there a week ahead of time to arrest protesters in their apartments. At occupy demonstrations, people aren’t even allowed to use megaphones. How is it that these guys show up in full riot gear even with clubs and gas masks?

Before Donald Trump was a politician, he was an entertainer. Race, gender, socio-economic status is material for their routines, i.e., John Belushi’s “Samari Sushi Chef” skit, or Eddie Murphy’s parody of Spanky’s “Reach out and Touch Somebody’s Hand.”
If the left were really concerned about racism, why don’t they organize massive peace protests? The US is currently bombing seven countries full of brown people who did nothing to deserve their death sentence.

One thing is for sure, he’s completely amoral. Does not care about right or wrong. If Nazis love him, then Nazis are lovely people. If the Pope doesn’t love him, then the Pope is a horrible loser. He didn’t denounce the KKK because he believes they love him.

You may be on to something here. DT is a different ‘racist’. Let me say first off, especially after this week of DT’s comments there is no doubt in my mind that he supports the ‘Alt-right’. But having said that he does not agree with many of the views held by most of the self proclaimed members of the alt-right. He is good with Jews and Israel. He has had a very mixed message on LBGT rights, in one instance saying “Katelyn Jenner can use any bathroom she wants” and in another speaking out against LBGT in the military. He has very few ‘people of color’ around him but the ones he does have he seems to be very loyal too. That is as long they are loyal to him.

DT seems to like and support anyone or anything that likes and supports him. Anything else does not matter. You can be a tyrannical totalitarian dictator who imprisons and murderers your own people and if you spoke in support of DT he would do the same for you.

It is almost as if he judges people on only one criteria and every other aspect of that person matters not. The only criteria is “Do your like me? Do you really like me?”

Ha, so decrying violence and intolerance makes you a socialist or a communist?

Here’s the thing about the “sides” comment, he wasn’t talking about multi-generational political philosophy debates (as he is unable to do so) he was talking about Charlottesville. And the flashpoint was a neo-nazi rally.

If that’s not obvious to you, you’ve lost the forest, the trees and any sense of logic trying to rationalize this idiocy.

I certainly would not mind the removal of one grave- that of SS Sturmbanfurhrer Larry Thorne. (I would also love his name being removed from the 10th Special Forces Group HQ at Fort Carson. Why does an Army Group have an HQ named for a member of the SS?)

TO ANSWER PART OF YOUR QUESTION: Lauri Allan Törni (28 May 1919 – 18 October 1965), later known as Larry Thorne, was a Finnish Army captain who led an infantry company against the Soviet Union in the Finnish Winter and Continuation Wars and moved to the United States after World War II. He fought under three flags: Finnish, German (when he again fought the Soviets in World War II), and American (where he was known as Larry Thorne) when he served in US Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War. Törni was killed in action during the Vietnam War.

To be honest, so what if Trump is a racist? He is a crude racist, but can’t the racist tag be applied to every American President since the end of WW2? Trump’s predecessor and opponent were both warmongers who supported a foreign policy that results in the indiscriminate killing of brown people around the world.

That’s a really ignorant comment. Castro and Che are heroes who greatly improved the lives of the vast majority of Cubans. Castro realized that allowing corporate propaganda in the sheep’s clothing of “free speech” would return Cuba to the dark days of being a playground for the U.S. elite while impoverishing the people who live there.

You can make a legitimate argument that it’s better to let the people have free speech and other democratic choices and make their own mistakes, and I would gladly entertain it. But comments like yours are disgusting and not worthy of response.

Its always interesting to see people that are waving hammer and sickle flags calling people they don’t agree with Nazi’s or oppressors of some sort. After all, the communists only killed 160 million people during the 20th century.

“Fidel Castro shed blood on a scale unimaginable in American terms. His butchers executed perhaps 15,000 prisoners, according to academic estimates cited by Wikipedia:

British historian Hugh Thomas, in his study Cuba or the pursuit of freedom[22] stated that “perhaps” 5,000 executions had taken place by 1970,[21] while The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators ascertained that there had been 2,113 political executions between the years of 1958–67.
Professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, Rudolph J. Rummel estimated the number of political executions at between 4,000 and 33,000 from 1958–87, with a mid range of 15,000.

That was in a country of 7 million. In per capita terms, that’s the equivalent of about 680,000 executions in the United States of America with our population of 318 million. What’s 680,000? The entire population of Denver or Seattle. Imagine taking every man, woman, and child of a major American city and murdering them. That’s the scale of Fidel Castro’s crimes.”

“Only a politician or leader with an impeccable reputation of upholding particular political values could perform an action in seeming defiance of them without jeopardizing his support or credibility.”

Remember the “Hope” that Obama gave us.

He paramilitarized our local police departments, turning cities into Baghdads.

Only Obama could absolve torturer John Brennan with magic words, “look Forward”. Making him head of the CIA, an achievement that even GW Bush
failed at.

David Rockefeller sent Nixon to China. David brags about it in his own autobiography — Memoirs — between pages 157 and 159.

David Rockefeller sent Nixon to China to offer China a business deal. After all, the Rockefellers (Std Oil New Jersey) got us into 3 wars — WW II (against Japan AND Germany), Korea, and Vietnam (over VN rubber plantations owned by his friend Mr. Michelin; synthetic rubber with Germany IG Farben). And, DR spearheaded the theft all silver coinage in America in 1965, to replace it with cupronickel coinage from copper mixed with nickel mined in Cuba (Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962).

Nixon was sent to China to work out a truce with Mao in VN. Goal: Salvage Rubber Plantations (for American Car Tires) and offer China an opportunity to cash in on Afghan Copper.

The para-militarization of our state, city, and local police forces began decades before the Obama Presidency. He certainly did nothing to stop the trend and continued to erode many of our civil rights over the course of his Administration, but you can’t legitimately place more blame on him than any other Administration over the past 50 years for the current state of our police depts.

Mr. Hassan is being disingenuous (polite word for LIAR) when he sites an article called “Black Crime” as proof of racism. Here is the actual article. Please read the actual article and decide for yourselves.